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!
The sound from a car is mostly tire noise.
Not when you’re going slow
Then I don’t hear them at all.
F=forward, R=reverse, D=Don’t move.
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
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.
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’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.
Under 20 I want choo-choo train noise, 20-50 would be tie fighter noise, over 50 flight of the valkyries.
It obviously needs to be the Jetson’s sound
I’d argue the sound should be standardized across all models. It needs to be immediately recognizable to nearby pedestrians.
Yeah it’s like saying that you think we should be able to customize our headlights to show the bat signal or something.
Like people die because of this shit, I frankly could not care less about what you wish your car sounded like.
Yes, because that is actually the purpose of those sounds. Not to sound “cool” but to warn pedestrians the otherwise nearly silent car may be moving.
That’s why Harleys are noisy.
Harleys are not noisy until assholes remove the mufflers.
Then why are Kawasakis much less noisy? I thought it was for the Harley’s owner’s inflated ego?
I wish I could change the sound on mine. When we reverse it sounds like a Temu TARDIS.
As someone who lives in a city and is constantly exposed to car noise: No.
Like, people have no idea how loud cars are. When I turn the volume of my ear buds to 100%, it hurts my ears. It’s so loud it’s uncomfortable. But when I’m riding my bike along the street to the city center, I can barely hear my podcasts, even at 100%
But when I’m riding my bike along the street to the city center, I can barely hear my podcasts, even at 100%.
Get something with noise cancelling.
That seems dangerous when riding a bike through a busy city. I intentionally wear these regular earbuds that don’t seal your ear airtight. I don’t like the feeling of having one of my senses completely cut off, especially when participating in traffic. That seems like a big security risk.
TBH it seems dangerous to listen to a podcast without oncoming traffic blaring through it, as fisch@lemmy.world wants.
Just imagine what it was like 50 years ago. How did people live in such insane noise polution conditions. Getting rid of noise should be one good enough reason for ev switch
The same content hurts your ears that you can’t hear in the city center?
I have this exact experience. To hear music on some busy streets, I have to turn the volume up to unhealthy levels (I stop listening at that point).
… How many hours have you spent here on earth ? Adaptative senses is a nifty feature which allows you to see better in the dark, listen in on quiet conversations, feel the texture of stuff and all of that only when it matters.
That doesn’t answer my question. Things can be different volumes and voice only productions are especially quiet.
This is a you think you want this but you don’t moment. If this is allowed you will constantly hear ads or people saying check out my channel at annoying.TV as they use driverless cars to circle your block.
They already do that with moving billboards. In my neighborhood the billboards are louder than my tv at half volume. Really pisses me off when they roll by.
What the fuck, is this real? Moving billboards that make noise? That is just fucking insane
That vehicle seems to have six vulnerable tires.
I see three and can imagine where a fourth would be, but where are the 5th and 6th?
Double tires in the rear.
Slightly behind the front ones, they do seem to be slightly obstructed from view though.
https://billboards-n-motion.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/GregHart-002-2048x957.jpg
These seem to be the same trucks from the same company, so the other guy saying double wheels in back is more likely correct
Double tires in the back.
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
You can load sounds of different model trains into the decoders that go in them to make them drive and light up and make sound. The sounds follow what a real locomotive does, too, like the chuffs, turbocharger, or what have you.
Imagine loading a steam locomotive sound into a car
Yeah, let’s confuse and distract the people around us in 2 ton moving death machines. Hahaha wouldn’t that be fun?
I love this idea. It would also be a lot of fun to load in niche locomotive sounds and see the secret train nerds light up when they hear a DC-10 or whatever
I want one to make the normal sound, but whenever you put it in park it moves to the Party Rock Anthem. Only the first little bit until they yell “Party Rock!” And then gets quiet.
Since there’s a long intro, it’s at about 1:38 the song starts, ignore the drums.
When I can get my car to sound like this:
Without following your link, it reads like you want your car to sound like“dwiomp”! I had a healthy chuckle
Clean up that link, everything after the question mark is for tracking.
Done.
