And that is normal because the combustion process inevitably made noise, and that noise came to define the background soundscape of our roads across countries and forests, cities and, in just a few words, the day-to-day life. But as hybrids and electric vehicles became increasingly mainstream — and more of their near-silent electric motors filled the streets — it became clear that silent vehicles didn’t fit in the ecosystem we’d built around cars. Bicycling in town and around the town I am used to hearing the vechicles approaching. Too loud vehicles are bad because they are just disturbing us during the nights and disturbing the animals in nature, but the no-sound vehicels can also be bad (they are more dangerous than bad and you should understand that not hearing them can hurt you).
In the video the driving sounds of EVs (Electric Vehicles) are explained by the designers who make them. Legislation eventually began to require electric vehicles to emit an artificial engine noise out of hidden external speakers and that us pretty good. Not perfect but good. These hidden speaker systems, called “Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems” — or AVAS — had to meet certain sonic criteria and they should be changed accordingly to area and time of day. It seems that, at least for a time, they were also a blank slate for sound designers to decide how the cars of the future should sound.
