Fake car noises in electric vehicles - photos

[Jon]

In the latest chapter of our Brave New Fake World, Toyota is developing electric vehicles with:

• Fake engine revving sounds
• Fake gear shifters not connected to anything
• Fake stalls when controls are not operated correctly

This comes on the heels of Dodge's concept EV, the Charger Daytona SRT, equipped with a 126 dB "synthetic" amplified faux-exhaust tone. It sounds like this:

Dodge's CEO has admitted their difficulty in duplicating the original sound:

"Did we crack the code on wide-open motors? Not yet. But we've got two years," CEO Tim Kuniskis said in an interview following the event. "We have changed the sound of that car 1000 times and we will continue to."

I have no problem with electric vehicles per se. If we can solve the problems associated with sourcing their power, and mining the metals for their batteries, then we may have a viable technological step forward.

I am also fine with quiet electric vehicles making noises in order to alert pedestrians. These safety mechanisms are called Electric vehicle warning sounds.

Things like the telltale camera shutter "click" with digital cameras are a little creepy, but also acceptable; you need some sort of audible indication of a completed photo. This is an auditory example of something called a skeuomorph.

Recall the hokey automotive trend of giant exhaust tips? That was cringey, but at least it wasn't synthetic.



Or "rolling coal"? A poor substitute for smoking your tires, but at least it's not a projected hologram of smoke.



Those previous exhaust trends are propagated by young men showing off, and are scoffed at by older automotive purists.

This new trend of artificializing vehicles is more worrisome not only because it's far less genuine, but because it's coming directly from the leadership of automotive manufacturers.


More:

https://archive.ph/YG7p5
https://archive.ph/Wa0cg