Worried that your EV will be too quiet? Don’t worry, help is at hand
If I’d been reading this item on Sebastian Fleischhacker’s LinkedIn page on April 1, I wouldn’t have believed it: Hyundai and Kia have patented a device to incorporate into electric vehicles so that their drivers can replicate the “feel”, noise and vibration of an internal combustion engine.
One of the principal advantages of electric motors, their near silence and stillness, is to be integrated into them so that nostalgics can enjoy the appeal of an obsolete technology: the fact that the power of the engine was wasted generating vibration and noise instead of being used for locomotion.
Most blind associations and anti-noise activists agree that adding extra noise to electric vehicles defeats one of their main advantages, and will do nothing to improve accident rates. In short, it is trying to solve a problem that does not exist. Along quiet streets, EVs can be heard perfectly well, whether you are blind or not. More to the point, if EVs pumping out fake engine noise are circulating on a busy road, their collective din will prevent us from distinguishing one from another anyway.
Adding noise and vibration so that drivers can enjoy the disadvantages of an obsolete technology, we have reached the paradigm of human stupidity, equivalent to Henry Ford putting horse manure under the…
