Should electric cars be made to go 'vroom'?

With whisper-quiet electric cars set to proliferate, the motor industry is under pressure to give them an artificial noise for safety purposes, but should they sound like traditional petrol vehicles?

Electric and hydrogen fuel vehicles are inherently quiet. The sound of the tyres on the road is noisier than the engine and this could prove lethal at slow speeds for pedestrians and cyclists.

Motor manufacturers acknowledge there is a problem. Some, like Nissan, are already fitting speakers under the bonnets of these vehicles to emit sounds for the safety of other road users. Others are planning on doing the same.

With the UK government predicting 8,600 electric cars will be sold by the end of this year, sound engineers say there is a pressing need to come up with some ground rules as to what sounds to pick. So why not just stick with the current sound of a conventional combustion engine?

"That would be losing a huge opportunity," says Prof Paul Jennings from Warwick University who leads a project looking into alternative vehicle noises. "We all know traffic noise can be annoying and the levels are significantly high. We do not want to lose the benefit we could get from using new reduced sounds." He says: "The challenge is to create sounds that are as safe as possible but also ones that are much more pleasing for the urban environment."

As part of the engineering project, an electric vehicle called Elvin (Electric Vehicle with Interactive Noise), is being driven around the university campus demonstrating a small sample of made-up sounds. There are certain noises that people associate with transport and they alert us that a vehicle is heading in our direction.

Whatever car manufacturers choose will only be effective if it does the same. But balancing the needs for safety and improving the environment are not the only requirements. Clearly the manufacturers will have a big say in what happens.

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source: BBC