Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Nyan Cat.
Nothing else says "get out of my way' like that would.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.
I see a huge modding community on the horizon...
It's all fun and game until
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
...Rickrolling while revving at a redlight occurs.
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
Jetson's car.
FTW.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
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!
More stupid laws brought to you by the buggy whip manufacturer's cartel.
Really, this is just stupid shit all over again.
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.
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.
Yeah, George Jetson's car would be the best, but second best would be the buzz-saw noise that the old Flash Gordon spaceships made.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUbGkSfaKrs
Hardly anyone would recognize it, but it that might make it even better!
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'
You can just as easily be caught by surprise by a conventional engine car with a newer engine too. Should they also outlaw very good mufflers?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
At one time there were laws insisting that anyone driving a "new-fangled horseless carriage" must:
- have someone walk ahead of them waving a red flag or lantern.
- shouting to warn others of the approaching vehicle
- honking a horn or otherwise making noise to "warn" oncoming traffic at any intersection.
The horse and buggy whip cartels also insisted that the automobile would "spook horses" and cause all sorts of problems. As it turned out, of course, the horses didn't give a rat's ass about the cars, they were more likely to spook because some idiot hitched up a mare in heat and some other idiot had an un-gelded stallion on the rein, or because some asshole shot off a gun near them.
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.
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.
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.
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=-
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.
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
Coconut shells cloppity-clopping. Perhaps with a minstrel singing a ballad recounting the bravery of the driver.