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Audi Gives Silent Electric Car Synthetic Sound
itwbennett writes "Audi's electric cars are quiet, maybe too quiet, which is why Audi spent 3 years creating replicated engine noise for its electric car models. We're so conditioned to the noise of an engine revving that a driver behind the wheel of a too-quiet car may not realize how fast he's driving, and a pedestrian relying on auditory clues may be unaware of an approaching vehicle, says Ralf Kunkel, Head of Audi Acoustics." Nissan's been on this for years (as has Honda); one day, you may only get to choose which noise your car makes, rather than whether it does.
That sounds like every SF car ever. I love it.
and they chose car noise. How uninspiring.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
I was just thinking, of all the things we need more in modern society, what would it be? The answer: NOISE!! Oh yeah. Its just too quiet in our cities.
I live in downtown Seattle and sometimes the noise is a bit much. The worst are the hogs that are designed to be incredibly noisy. People need to WATCH where they're going (look both ways, morons) and LOOK at the speedometer. And no, I'm not moving to some suburb or the country. It's not a living nightmare or anything, but I hardly see any good reason, other than just supporting stupidity, to actually put work into creating noise.
Fewer blind people will be killed.
Every major city has one for speakers. If they are creating a sound, I wonder how that will work with our existing laws.
would be the nyan cat jingle
Finally men can spend their entire lives going "Vroom! Vroom!" behind the wheel, instead of being forced to stop at the tender age of 11.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
The Jetsons.
If I ever get to choose my own sound, it will be this.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
While the idea of adding fake noise to silent operation still seems silly to me, i was caught by surprise by a hybrid in a parking lot. I hate to be that guy, but there was enough other noise I didn't hear it rolling and it spooked me. Should cars be heard for safety reasons?
If I got one of these, I'd just it in the driver's seat with the windows open, screeching "NYYYYYAAA! NE-YEEHHH! REEEEEEEEEEEE-OOOH! RRRRR! RRRR-CK!".
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
The obvious answer continues to elude the automobile industry's greatest minds: Raymond Scott's Powerhouse. Thousands of electric cars on a highway playing Powerhouse in unison would be orgasmic!
Am I the only one who thinks it shouldn't take 3 years to figure out how to make a car produce engine noises? There are plenty of video games out there that manage to pull it off and I doubt any of them spent even 3 months on designing engine noises. Granted they didn't have to work out all the hardware involved, but even that doesn't seem like it should take years.
Look at it this way, some one was just killed by a bicycle and the blind deal with those everyday and they are just as quiet. 99% of the people benefiting from the sound will in fact be people that can't be bothered to look first. I've had gasoline running cars that were silent enough I didn't hear them approach. There does seem to be a touch of insanity making regulations that require noise pollution. Whether it's hydrogen or battery electric motor driven vehicles are likely the future so are we now setting a standard that we are committing to a future of gasoline engine sounding cars from here on out? To me it seems a little like demanding cars make the sound of horse hooves a 100 years ago so people were more comfortable with the transition.
... so the rest of us do not have to pay for the system if we decide to buy the car.
Bubba Rub was a visionary
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnzw_i4YmKk
Reporter: Can you tell me about the whistles?
Bubb Rubb: The whistles go WOO-- You wanna WOO WOO--
Reporter: Some neighbors are saying it’s “way too loud.”
Bubb Rubb: That’s only in the mowrning. He’s supposed to be up cooking breakfast or something, so it’s like an alarm clock!
Either a TARDIS arriving sound or warp engine.
BTW, there's a gauge on most cars that tell you how fast it's going. Just tossin that out there FYI.
*Be sure to get your parent's permission first. $4.00 licensing fee per month.
I understand that they're just taking four large playing cards, jamming them in the spokes of the wheels and leaving it at that.
I hear it has an optional TOPS-20 nav system installed with a Microsoft Bob-like GUI overlay for only $10,100
All I could think of when I heard it is the Tron Lightcycle sound. A little high frequency filter and it's the same thing.
Problem solved!!
How much would Warner Bros. Animation, owner of copyright in The Jetsons after it bought Hanna-Barbera, charge to license that signature sound?
That depends on whether you want to be held liable for wrongful death and/or guilty for vehicular manslaughter. Car insurers at the very least will probably require them.
NHTSA FARS data, 2002-2006: 27 legally blind pedestrians were killed by automobiles. 27/5 == 5.4 per year. Blind people being run over by automobiles simply isn't a rampant problem. Blind people often rely on audio cues to cross the street, but not the sound of engines. Instead, the chirp or verbal commands from crosswalk signal heads is the audio cue for blind pedestrians, combined with the trust that motorists will look for peds when turning right at intersections.
It's noise pollution, and it's oh so unnecessary.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Back in the old days, we just used baseball cards and clothespins to give our bikes sound effects.
A speaker making 'vroom vroom' noises outside the car does nothing for the driver - most modern Audi-class cars are so quiet inside you can barely hear an internal combustion engine. Some cars (even loud high-performance ones) already artifically add engine noise to the stereo system so the driver can gauge their speed.
I want my car silent.
As to blind people crossing the road. That's just going to be a new challenge. I don't see why everyone in society has to have engine noise in otherwise silent cars just so blind people can tell cars are coming.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Oh noes... the car is too quiet! It could sneak up on somebody before they hear it!!!!
Give me a break.
Seriously... this is just such a colossally stupid idea that it had to be dreamed up by lawyers.
In some newer conventional engine cars, you have to strain to listen for the engine, when its on a low speed. Are they going to now require that mufflers not cut out more than certain amount of sound?
And at higher speeds, you're going to hear the sound of the tires on the road LONG before you hear the sound of engine, unless, again, the engine is an older one or the muffler isn't doing it's job correctly.
Are they going to also require that bicycles have such noisemakers installed? What about motorized wheelchairs? Both can cause extremely serious injury to people when moving at high velocities.
This idea is just so incredibly stupid that it gives me a headache just trying to imagine the mentality of people who thought it was a good notion.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Burns gas and ozone for no reason.
The bus traveling music that accompanies Peter in the Family Guy episode where he wishes for his own theme music.
At around 0:50 in this poorly captured clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN9GAApDpsw
Or, perhaps the bus theme music in Earthbound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVv5CuKgAzg
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
Haven't you wondered why your digital camera makes a shutter noise? In some cases including a motordrive sound.
Rest assured, from the technical side they could do it very quickly, as you outlined.
The problem is more than likely in market research. Bringing people in, asking them to listen to 50 varieties of car noises and judging them, to find just the "right" one that is pleasant, audible, but not overpowering, and most importantly better than any competitors.
Just like software development for consumers, often it's the UX/UI that is very time consuming and nit-picky, not the actual software itself.
Wasn't this in the above novella (or something like it)?
I vaguely remember reading some story years ago about how they made cars for the stupid people that actually went really slowly, but had huge tail-fins & made really impressive growly engine noises, so as to fool the drivers into thinking they were going a lot faster than they were.
Noise pollution is one of the biggest banes of living in urban areas, and to say that automobiles contribute significantly to noise pollution is a major understatement.
Sure, keep them quiet, and a few more people will die every year. Mostly stupid people.
I say it's worth it, for reducing the noise and proven stress levels they cause, which everybody else has to deal with.
What about the people who live next to a road? Or people walking along a separated pavement (sidewalk to the Americans) next to a road? Quieter cars benefit them all - in fact the reason we have maximum noise restrictions on cars at all is to reduce noise pollution to others.
Why should we require noise pollution?
Is this going to be some attempt to legislate that urban areas have as much vehicle noise in future, as they do today and no less?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
As a bicyclist, I sometimes get the shit scared out of me when I'm riding on the road and a really quiet car passes. I can get so startled that I swerve. Maybe cars could have two horns. The regular one that busts people's ear drums, and a small beeper type horn that you could use to alert pedestrians and cyclists to your presence.
most modern Audi-class cars are so quiet inside you can barely hear an internal combustion engine.
I drive a 2000 Audi A4 Quattro with the 30-valve V6. It is not very quiet inside at all. I have to crank the stereo up pretty high to hear over the engine and road noise on the highway. Maybe the newest, and most expensive Audi's, like the A8, are quieter, but the little ones are as noisy as there Volkswagen counterparts.
Since somebody beat me to the Jetson's car sound, I suggest the Monty Python clippety-clop coconut sound. As an extra bonus, a horse whinny for a braking sound.
NHTSA FARS data, 2002-2006: 27 legally blind pedestrians were killed by automobiles. 27/5 == 5.4 per year.
Who cares about facts, won't someone please think about the blind children?
-=Lothsahn=-
second coming of crazy frog!!!!
so instead of people having bumper stickers, they'll have audio commercials...
wait a minute. I wonder if I could get a cheaper car if it played commercials?
hmm
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
use the horn.
You've never been in a parking lot with any of these electric cars. Without any engine noise, it's hard enough for a sighted person to tell if a car is going to back up or not. I'd hate to be my blind co-worker.
The article is a lie. Audi didn't do this for safety... they did it because engine noises produce an emotional response. We are conditioned to tie the power of the vehicle to the sound it makes. Audi has a reputation for fast cars, and a silent car does not provide the same emotional feedback, thus reducing the perceived value of the vehicle to the consumer. This is particularly true of the all-important test drive... even if you can disable the sound later, by default they want you to feel the horsepower in your gut when you hit that pedal for the first time.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
If they weren't sop stupid as to be blind then Githaron wouldn't have to worry about anyone but himself, now would he.
"one day, you may only get to choose which noise your car makes, rather than whether it does."
Me and Mr. side-cutters beg to differ...
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
The nonsense about electric cars is no different. It's just attempts by the lobbying department of interested automobile makers (the ones who aren't adapting to the 21st century) using bribed republicans and regulatory capture to try to create artificial barriers to adoption against their competition.
A very long time ago steam was the proven technology, electric cars were considered quiet and civilized, and gas engine cars were the noisy, dangerous, smelly upstarts. The gas engine car manufacturers engaged in a major FUD campaign against electric cars. They were dangerous! They were so quiet you couldn't hear them coming...
We have an active electric vehicle club here in Vancouver. The loudest noise their best conversions make is the whirr of the tires, sometimes with a slight groan from their power controllers. They have a 1912 Detroit electric car, and it's almost completely silent.
Our bus system has one of the larger fleets of electric trolley buses in the western world. They too are very quiet, but people get used to looking for them before crossing the street.
...laura
Around here pedestrians have right of way *at crosswalks*, either explicit or implicit (generally where a sidewalk continues across both sides of an intersection).
A pedestrian who steps out into traffic in the middle of the block where there is no crosswalk definitely does NOT have right of way.
This has bothered me for several years. One of the beauties of an electric car is the lack of noise. Humans have a strange relationship to sound. I see many articles where people want cars to sound like cars, yet I have friends who are surprised that my robotic vacuum (Roomba) is "so noisy". I stand on street corners and feel assaulted by the noise from dozens of idling engines providing no useful work and wonder how nice it would be to drop the sound level on our streets. It's noisy now with lots of idling internal combustion engines, but imagine if we have dozens of different noises, all customized from regular engine noise, futuristic space noise, to Nyan Cat. Is this the sort of environment we want? Cacophony. I am sympathetic to the plight of sight impaired people, they currently rely upon sound, but quiet vehicles already produce problems for them, and as drivers we MUST be careful of ALL pedestrians. I'm not sure the solution is to replicate old technology by imitating old noises. There must be a better solution than hacking something on to a relatively clean and simple system.
The Jetsons.
If I ever get to choose my own sound, it will be this.
Here we go...Customize your car sound with downloadable "cartones".
I choose the sound of baseball cards on the spokes of a bicycle!
Coconut shells cloppity-clopping. Perhaps with a minstrel singing a ballad recounting the bravery of the driver.
How do I get rid of this "feature". It's pointless. Lets also make Ethernet cards sound like modems.
If you are casually walking and being distracted while crossing a street:
1- You deserve to die. Natural selection chose your dumb ass.
2- You are gonna get ran over by a noisy car too.
a car that is too quiet means the driver won't be able to tell how fast he/she is driving........ um.............. it is called a speedometer. it works like this.. it senses the vehicles speed, and displays it right in front of you. so..... that.... you.... know.... how.... fast.... you.... are.... driving.... seriously... who doesn't know this?
If any choice is possible, why not go for broke in terms of being really loud and obnoxious? So why not a UH-1 "Huey"?
Then not only will people hear you, but they'll be looking for where the hell that really low flying helicopter is.
For the extra bit of win, get a loop of "Ride of the Valkyries" to play in addition.
General Motor's EV1 was deliberately designed with a noise generator because it was too quiet.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Why don't they put a horse's head on the hood, too? You know, so horses wouldn't be afraid of the carriages moving by themselves.
I see a huge modding community on the horizon...
I know, right? Here are several sounds I will mod into my first electric
1) The sound of a fomula1 car driving at full speed.
2) The sounds of a rabbit screaming as it is ripped apart by a pack of hungry dogs.
3) Automatic weapon fire. If that doesn't discourage nearby jaywalkers, nothing will.
4) A steam locomotive sound. Bonus points for the steam whistle.
5) A looped sample of a teen comedy scene where someone is taking a dump in a bathroom.
6) UHF white noise.
7) Overly excited commentator narration from the Daytona 500 (..ANDHEREHECOMESDOWNTHEBACKSTRETCHOHNOBOBBYJOHNESJRHASACCIDENTALLYTAPPEDHISREAR PANNELITSATOTALWIPEOUT!)
8) looped slurping sounds
9) looped dubstep music, played in reverse. (Who could tell the difference?)
10) The David Letterman reading 10 ten lists.
All of these would be played the an enhanced PA system I'd mod on the car to generate up to 110db of sound, because we wouldn't want anyone to not hear me coming.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
yes please
How about Audi funds a free class for drivers which teaches them the importance of not running over pedestrians.
I don't drive a hybrid but at idle the engine is pretty quiet. I use a hypermiling technique called "pulse and glide" where you accelerate up to speed and then let the car glide for a while in neutral.
During the glide the tire noise is much louder than the engine. I have to wonder if differences between tire noise is more dangerous than differences between ICE and electric motors. Depending on the tires I could easily imagine an ICE car being quieter than a hybrid. Some tires are very quiet.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Laws, regulations, circus. You are new here; have a nice stay.
http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMzg3MDUwMTI1OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzY0NDIxNA@@._V1._SY317_CR0,0,214,317_.jpg
The theme song from Benny Hill
The Spanish Fly music
Both of these slow down and speed up with the car.
Task Mangler
If your car is silent you also support terrorism and kiddieporn.
Are we running out of real issues to spend energy on?
they did this in the late 70s. i saw it on thats incredable. you could pic like 1 of 4 cars and it hooked up to disributer to know how fast to sound.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Anyone else think that governments shouldn't be involved in someone else's business of buying or selling a product or service? I will seriously weep if cars are forced by law to be noisy...
Plus, by the time silent cars are very popular, blind people will have google glasses that have wires that connect straight into the visual centers in their brain and form images using microsoft kinect technology and it'd costs 1 bitcoin (which is a world standard and been revised without the current paper-trail flaws).
This is of course if libertarian positions became popular lol.
If [blind people] are in a busy area, then they should use the crosswalk.
But if all cars are electric and dang near silent, how do they know when the cross traffic has stopped and it is safe to use the crosswalk? I've read rumors that some cities have installed audible pedestrian signals, but I've never seen one.
If it sounds like the Crazy Frog engine, I'm going to limit driving only to the vaccum of space.
You were leaving the brakes on
... and that's the hum of an internal combustion engine.
The attempt to make electric cars sound like ICEs is silly. First, it's motivated by people attempting to use their guts to determine what constitutes a safety feature. It's all very intuitive to think that a noisy car is safer. Except that it really isn't. Pedestrians don't rely heavily on their sense of sound to avoid getting hit. They just don't. Spend time watching pedestrians at an intersection, and you'll realize that they're either (a) not paying attention at all, or (b) using their sight to avoid cars.
Trying to use sound to avoid collisions is problematic for two reasons. First, because all the other cars in the vicinity that don't pose an immediate threat are also making noise, the noise of cars closer to you gets drowned out. Second, because it's very hard to tell where a sound is coming from, especially in urban environments, where sounds reflect off buildings. Do the experiment yourself. Close your eyes, and listen for cars, and see if you can tell where they are. It's extremely difficult.
Electric cars also are not silent to start off with. They still produce wind noise, and tire noise, like other cars.
But, perhaps the biggest logical farce is that these noisemakers are being justified based on a multi-year study done by NHTSA, whereby hybrids got into a higher number of accidents with pedestrians than conventional cars, and at low speeds, hybrids work similarly to electric cars (can be quieter). The factor by which hybrids got into more ped accidents was about 1.4 (40% more). That's not a huge amount more, but it certainly is noticeable.
The problem is that the study did not account for the environment hybrids tend to operate in. With half of this country living in urban vs. rural settings, you don't see hybrids represented equally in both. By a two to one ratio, you see more hybrids among city dwellers. And if you look at overall pedestrian accident data, you'll see that pedestrian accidents are twice as likely in urban environments. So, the increased rate of ped accidents with hybrids can probably be explained completely by simply understanding that they operate in riskier environments.
The study also only attempts to address accidents caused by the car making the noise (or not). The study makes no attempt to understand that aside from the car that actually hits the pedestrian, every other car in the vicinity was making noise that made it harder for that particular car to be heard. Electric cars make the environment quieter for everybody, which could have a small beneficial effect that makes it less likely for all the cars around them to go unnoticed, because of ambient noise. In game theory terms, this is a true Prisoner's Dilemma, where the automakers are concluding that every car should be noisy, in an attempt to out-noisy the rest, paying no attention to the net effect of all the noise pollution.
When you consider these factors, you realize that the overall affect on pedestrian safety from quiet cars is very small. Certainly nowhere near the 40% figure that's spawned this hysteria.
This is really just an attempt by the auto industry, that is really looking for excuses to say, "we just can't build cars competitively any other way ... and thus were right all along to populate the planet with pollution machines". It's pretty pathetic, really.
Makes you wonder which sounds different cultures will produce. Will it reflect the country's stereotypes? Will popular composers be chosen? Would there be a yearly or monthly poll who's got the coolest sound? Etc...
I wouldn't be surprised if in my fair country lucky strikes occur (sort of) which the competition attributes to too infantile or too simple a technique but which the mass kinda likes.
I for one hope Tom Waits will produce an all American sound and the Kraftwerk will influence the German car scene. Showaddywaddy would get out of their graves for the UK. Los del Rio will inevitably produce Seat noises.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
I watched the video and thoroughly enjoyed the sound.
I may wire up my (traditional gas engine) car to make the same sound through loudspeakers located underneath the car.
I have a Prius (2nd hand) and with a CVT, the engine is usually running at about the same rev range, but the speed varies a lot. So I need a sound based on speed and not 'engine' RPM. (for those people who don't understand the Pruis setup, a petrol engine provides the running power a lot of the time while the electric motors take up the slack and lessen the strain. The transmission varies the gear ratio without the usual 'steps' and so the engine can be held at optimum rpm while the CVT accelerates the car)
There was an unknown error in the submission.
When very young I know I was nearly killed by a car which did not see me , while it was tying to park. Luckily I DID hear it and jumped back. Now if it had been a silent car.... ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I would hack it to sound like horse drawn carriage :)
Tron Light Cycle.
The important thing is that no one else saw it coming.
Like a speaker saying "Heeeeeeeeeeeeey Watch Your ASS!!!" repeating until you shut the car down.
It would fall under fair use; you would be sampling only about 200ms of audio and then loop it on playback
The third fair use factor is "amount and substantiality" (my emphasis). I'm no lawyer and unfamiliar with case law on what constitutes "substantiality" of a looped sound recording, so I don't feel ready to argue that right now. But I did remember that copyright isn't the only form of Forced Artificial Scarcity (FArtS) that applies; the sound could also be considered an unregistered trademark, just as Harley-Davidson considers the "potato potato" sound of its motorcycles its trademark.
I want my car to make a loud earth shatering continuous fart noise!
Audis founder was named August Horch ; horch translates to :listen
listen translates to: audi in latin
So if anyone has an exuse for soundengeneering...
should imitate engine too.
They can go as fast as as 30-50 km/h and pedestrians may overlook some of them.
1) The sound the "Flubber" car makes... :)
2) The sound that other old flying Disney car made with the wings... can't make brain work right now. I'll I remember is a lot of horrible singing.
3) A Sean Connery Voice that says "Rig for Silent Running"...
Some have demonstrated a device that can project a sound to the vicinity of someone's head that will hardly be heard elsewhere, I think the demo was up to 30 feet away, which is good for parking lots, and I bet that will be greatly improved upon. So the car remains silent except to those in the path or converging. Yes, this will take some visual sensors and processing. This IS Slashdot.
The best part is that the "noise" can be personalized. Think of the possibilities.
I suppose the folks who make money selling ringtones will look at this as a growth market.
But just remember -- a lot of communities have anti-noise ordinances.
Fortunately evs still have tires, which are what make most of the noise in most any car at residential street or parking lot speeds.
That's what I thought. Then I unloaded a computer out of a coworker's electric car, and was walking to the crosswalk in front of it. I was watching the car because I had heard they were quiet, but was thinking that I'd hear the tire noise, a click, or something especially since my attention was on it at the time. Nope. It just zoomed off right past me and down the street while passing within two feet of me, and I never heard a thing.
..I can tell you how common it is for pedestrians to step into the street without looking if they don't hear any traffic. I've had way too many close calls.So we either need smarter pedestrians or electric cars that make noise. Make mine sound like a TIE fighter, please.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
In my novel Cyberchild, which came out in 2005, a character has a car-aftermarket shop where he also adds or upgrades the sound kits on electric cars. Not the focus of the book, but a part of the background. It is a good read, though: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberchild-Alix-Paultre/dp/1411626613.
A gentleman named George Carter invented and patented a technology solution for implementing the sound of any type engine to any type of wheeled vehicle.
http://carterinventions.com/about.htm
He invented it for his Chaparral Grand Prix cars so they would sound like F1 racing cars instead of Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engines.
the solution to this is to turn every vehicle into an ice cream van.
I had this exact same idea almost 8 years ago when my friend bought his Prius and was showing it to me.
Although my idea was to have it sound like the Jetson's car...