Electric cars have to make noise on purpose because otherwise it would be a silent car. And most of these noises are are weird futuristic WEEEE-00000 UFO sounds. Therefore I posit that we should be able to change the noises our electric cars make
EDIT: These suggestions are Top-Notch! Keep em coming!
I’m not suggesting the following is standard, but the specific sound my car makes allows for people to not just hear the car, but to also know what direction the sound is coming from. The sound is engineered this way.
Compare this with those utility trucks that have those signature “reverse/backing up” (beep…beep…beep) sounds. You can hear it, but it’s almost impossible to tell from what direction. It’s been a complaint by blind people, and there’s still worker incidents where they step into a moving path of a vehicle despite the sound.
You can even make sounds that work against this technique. Home audio systems use directional audio to give the effect of sounds being in certain locations. I wouldn’t want people to be able to change a car sound to something that is more dangerous.
I think that’s what the static sound is for. It doesn’t have a broken speaker it’s easier to hear where the truck is at
Under 20 I want choo-choo train noise, 20-50 would be tie fighter noise, over 50 flight of the valkyries.
The sound from a car is mostly tire noise.
Not when you’re going slow
Then I don’t hear them at all.
That’s how they sneak up on you.
Goddam right.
True but that’s not relevant.
So we need noisemakers on gas and EV cars.
Yes because drivers of EVs hit pedestrians and this helps save lives.
If cars (EV and gas) are travelling at road speed, tires are the loudest sound. If cars (EV and gas) are traveling at very reduced speed, neither make a sound. I have no idea what you are talking about.
The engine and everything in an ICE car make sound at reduced speed. It’s not the loudest on new cars but its still like 40db. I have no idea what you are talking about.
I’m saying a gas car travelling at low speed doesn’t make a sound. Does it help if I repeat myself?
That’s wrong. It very much makes sound.
I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, I could drive a car that makes a TIE fighter sound, or the time machine DeLorean from Back to the Future.
On the other hand, someone could have their car make the Dumb and Dumber “most annoying sound in the world,” or just one long continuous wet fart, or pro-fascist propaganda. Or worse, something completely silent and incredibly dangerous.
Maybe if you could download special sound packs, like you can for GPSes. I bet Lucasfilm and Universal would go for that.
Silent is actually the easy one, for many EVs you can just pull the fuse for the noise maker. It was pretty cool rolling down our driveway in a near completely silent car, but it felt very wrong, immediately replaced the fuse.
I question the need for a noise sometimes. My son has a 2001 Tahoe that is dead silent and has caused him to try to start it with it running a few times. Meanwhile if I start my car it’s loud enough to wake the dead (at least until it idles down), different strokes for different folks I guess.
I always wanted to mod my car so the stereo plays different pod-racer sounds depending on rpm, but it never got past the idea phase. Wonder if you could do the same for EV’s
They’re the same for safety. People need to build a subconscious mental model of what a car sounds like so they can be safe as pedestrians and cyclists.
If there were 1000 different sounds, that mental model would never form.
I wish I could change the sound on mine. When we reverse it sounds like a Temu TARDIS.
F=forward, R=reverse, D=Don’t move.
F= fast, R= real fast D= dangerously fast.
What do we got on this thing, a CuisinArt?!? LUDICROUS SPEED, GOOOO!!!
“silent car”
lmao nope those things are loud as fuck because of the tires and weight
Mine has selections but no option to use my own.
Since the sounds are to meet regulatory requirements, I doubt you’ll see ability to use arbitrary noises, at least for the exterior noise.
Good point, the sounds car companies use probably have to be approved by regulators.
This is why you need an open source car OS
really loud bubbles.
TIL nobody listens to their environment while they walk outside.
can nobody else hear the sound of the tires on the pavement? or can nobody else hear the sound of the environment being reflected differently off the cars coming down the road?
When you’re habituated to the sound of ICE engines, if you’re not focused on your environment, the quieter tire sounds absolutely can sneak up on you.
And when you’re just strolling, it’s pretty natural for your attention to wander. Just because you can hear something doesn’t mean you’ll notice something.
sounds like a pedestrian problem. just because you’re walking doesn’t absolve you from remaining attentive to the flow of traffic just as much, if not more, than when driving.
In 50+ years I have never had a vehicle sneak up on me. no car, no motorcycle, no bicycle.
Congratulations!
The rest of us, flawed creatures that we are, sometimes slip - we may even think we’re actively attending to our environment while also chatting, thinking, or paying attention to something else. It’s a shortcut our brains take: when they get accustomed to things working (or sounding) one way, they’ll focus on those cues instead of other, potentially subtler, cues. Even if we’re actively trying not to
“Hit by a car!? What a jay!” You sound like a 1900’s baron.🧐 Go live in car city and kiss cars and suck tailpipe since you love them so much!
fuckcars is leaking I guess?
I live outside of the US in a very walkable urban area, so this comment is breaking my brain.
In suburbia, sure.
In the town centre, there’s so many vehicles around that it’s very easy for an electric vehicle to creep up on you.
Is your argument that we should make these vehicles quieter because you personally don’t experience this issue?
no, my argument is that it doesn’t matter what sound it makes as long as it makes a sound.
pedestrians need to be more aware of their surroundings, this doesn’t absolve drivers either.
pedestrians often just blindly assume because they have the right of way that means they don’t have to pay attention, and that’s how they die.
Completely impractical. Standardise noises for warnings. I’m not going to react to the sound of Nyan Cat played on the Bagpipes and think “oh that’s a car coming”.
Also, pedestrians DO have the right of way. How do I know? I got hit by a driver at night in the rain, with his lights off, coasting in neutral. Couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see him. Court settled in my favour.
Also, pedestrians DO have the right of way.
I wasn’t arguing that. pedestrians DO have the right of way, but that doesn’t absolve them from ensuring their own safety. just because you have the right of way in a vehicle when the light is green doesn’t mean you just floor it and hope for the best.
How do I know? I got hit by a driver at night in the rain, with his lights off, coasting in neutral. Couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see him. Court settled in my favour.
now imagine how much better you’d feel if you were a bit more attentive to your surroundings! no splashy splash of the wheels on pavement? no bouncy bounce of the rain off the car? you were probably distracted by trying to stay dry.
100% of all accidents are caused by a lack of information that could have been resolved by better observation.
You don’t have right of way in a vehicle when the light is green - pedestrians still have right of way.
There was no “splash splashy of wheels on the pavement” because the car was in the road, not the pavement.
There were plenty of “splashy splashy” noises around, because there were lots of vehicles. The “bouncy bounce” of rain on that car was easily confused with the “bouncy bounce” of rain of every other car/surface/building/person in the area.
I’m not sure if you’re intentionally being moronic, or if you genuinely feel like you know more about the situation of my accident than I do. The fact remains that electric vehicles shouldn’t simply be able to make some random noise. They need to be audible and recognisable to prevent accidents.
tell me. how would the outcome of your accident change if you were deaf?
I bet you would be much more observant if you couldn’t hear anything.
I’m not deaf.
We’re digressing from the original disagreement
no, my argument is that it doesn’t matter what sound it makes as long as it makes a sound.
I believe it is important for vehicles to sound like vehicles, so they can be easily identified. They shouldn’t be randomly changed by their owner to something whimsical.
I disconnected the noise maker in my car. I want it to be silent. That’s one of the selling points.
If you’re in the US federal law requires EVs to emit sounds while going under about 20 mph so pedestrians and cyclists can hear them approach. If you ever hit anybody who steps into the street because they couldn’t hear you, you’ll be in deep doggie doodoo.
If I hit somebody that steps into the street then it’s my fault no matter what. Doesn’t matter whether they could hear me. Besides, most people wear earbuds when walking around town.
Guess how that plays out insurance wise. Whatever liability coverage you think you have, forget it if you willfully disabled legally mandated safety features. Even if it’s a motor vehicle accident where the noise wouldn’t have realistically made a difference, even if the other party is at fault in practical terms, if they find out your car safety features were tampered with you could be on the hook without help of insurance.
Not true, young padawan. I personally hit a jaywalker one time and didn’t even get a traffic citation. She was crossing against the light, at night, in a pounding rain, and apparently hadn’t bothered to look. I wasn’t quite able to stop in time. Witnesses confirmed my story and contradicted hers (that she was in the crosswalk with the light in her favor). If somebody disables their own hearing it’s on them, but if they claimed not to hear you and your car was in fact not making any sound because you disabled it (in violation of federal law) it would be on you.
If I hit somebody that steps into the street then it’s my fault no matter what.
This is not at all true. If someone steps out in front of you with little or no time for you to react, they’re just as much at fault. It will be much easier to argue that you’re to blame, when you’ve intentionally disabled the saftey device that would have alerted them to your presence though.
Even if it was true however: Just because it would be your fault doesn’t mean you should increase the chances of it happening.
Besides, most people wear earbuds when walking around town.
This is entirely your own false perception. Many if not most people don’t wear headphones near traffic, or at least only wear one, so that they can still hear their suroundings.
Regardless; Some people choosing to blockout sounds is no excuse for you putting everyone else in danger.
You should fix this, or you should be cited for willful public endangerment and the vehicle towed+impounded.
What the fuck?
I want to do this very thing if/when I have an electric car. I specifically want that old school cartoon jalopy sound. Put put put put BANG BANG put put put put
If I had an electric car, I’d turn my sound into Jeremy Clarkson yelling “POWER, MORE POWER!!!” over and over again so people would know I’m coming.
Horn goes arOOga.
This reminded me of how I read the Grapes of a Wrath in its entirety before learning that it’s ja-LOP-ee, not JA-la-pee. Also, “oncet” is not On-set, it’s wunst.
Wunst!? I know the joke with reading something before hearing it is you won’t always be right but wunst??? vaguely gestures at everything😩😂😩
It’s a regional way of saying “once.” As in, “oncet I finish this, I’ll start on that.” The spelling is a crime though.
that’s mostly what I was getting at lol. who came up with that spelling??
It’s for grammatical reasons. It’s the same “t” as whenst. From whenst you came ~= from oncet you came
It’d be better spelt as “once’t”
For me, once’t in an oakie vernacular would be a contraction of once and it:
I’d grab a beer once’t finished.
but of course that’s just me and I left the Central Valley a long time ago and am not a professional linguist, I’m just telling you about my perception of the vernacular from where I grew up.
You say that as if “whenst” is a word we would’ve encountered before.
I was teaching my native English speaking students German and explained that woher and wohin are like whence and whither, and the looks of utter unrecognition made me realize I was doing this. I tried for a moment with “thence and thither? Hence and hither?” And 4/7 knew “hence,” but that was it, and it’s not really used in the same sense as the others, anyway (I mean, it is, but it’s metaphoric and most people saying it probably aren’t thinking of it in that sense).
It’s an archaic version of whence.
But then wouldn’t it be “onest”?
Whence/whenst, once/onest
But I would pronounce that o-nest, so six of one, half dozen of the other I suppose.
If I were to affect an oakie, I would produce “onest” to mean something like “singular” or “unique”, or possibly “solitary” or “lonely”. I would mean it as a superlative of the ordinal “one” and it would be pronounced slightly differently.
This is very funny for me. The phrase “floppy jalopy” to mean flimsy still gets a lot of play in the region, and so I’d heard the word many, many times before I read it. It wasn’t until I read the Grapes of Wrath that I found out it referred to a car.
That’s a great idea! I would just record myself making car noises and use that.
That’s the best idea!
Brbrbrbrbrbrb
Rutabaga Rutabaga Rutabaga Rutabaga
