Nissan Leaf Electric Car to Emit ‘Blade-Runner’ Noise

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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One of the major concerns about electric cars is that they are too quiet, often catching pedestrians and cyclists by surprise. Nissan will address this issue with their upcoming Leaf electric car by having it emit a sound inspired by the flying cars in Blade Runner. I’d rather my car sound like a TIE Fighter, thank you very much.

“We decided that if we’re going to do this, if we have to make sound, then we’re going to make it beautiful and futuristic,” Tabata said. “We wanted something a bit different, something closer to the world of art.”
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That's pretty badass. I wonder if the sound will be made mechanically or if it will be hackable.
 
I want my car to emit a farting noise and spur sulfur wherever I go.
 
Jetson's noise for me!

Wooob wooob wooob wooob woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
 
Ugh, we should be rejoicing in silent cars. There's no recorded incidents of an electric/hybrid vehicle striking and injuring a blind person; why solve a problem that doesn't exist? Seems pretty foolish to reinvent noise pollution.

That said if it has to make a noise I vote for the TIE fighter sound. That would make electric cars badass like no other.
 
TIE fighter would be cool, but I think I'd want mine to laugh like Peter Griffin.
 
If it's hackable, I would want it to sound like an overcammed, supercharged, big block V8 running a straight exhaust. Oh, and for maximum WTF value as I drive down the street, it needs to be the smallest, blandest, little electric car on the market.
 
Reminds me of the South Park episode about ... SMUG. ;)


Electric cars are still a joke. They cost more to produce and their manufacturing process takes a larger toll on the environment than most SUVs and trucks do over their entire lifetimes. But hey, who gives a flying !@#$ as long as it makes you "feel good" right? Facts, who needs them as long as you "get it" and toe the line; I mean, it's done Al Gore wonders.

Same thing with the BS light bulbs... Mercury levels in our water supplies have increased by leaps and bounds over the past 50 years and now we're going to switch to these "safer" and more "eco-friendly" light bulbs which guess what... Contain mercury, whereas incandescent bulbs don't.

Chemicals which mimic estrogen are found in (and leech out of) the plastics we use to drink out of and they're deemed to be safe and all the while the testosterone level of your average man in the US has decreased over the last 50 years.

*sings* doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom
 
I would have to go with a 454 bb with open headers as my sound. Just to confuse the hell out of everyone.
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AbsintheCommando said:
Ugh, we should be rejoicing in silent cars.
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There have been reports of Prius' hitting people who couldn't hear the car running at low speeds. Noise does have a tangible safety benefit. Loud pipes on motorcycles are a good example of that, minus the douches who do it just to be annoying, there do save lives.
 
Why are we so concerned in the first place? Didn't your parents teach you to LOOK both ways before crossing the street? Honestly, roads are built for cars, not people, so pedestrians need to be mindful of that and stay on the sidewalk.

Drivers also need to be aware about where they are, and not drive too fast for conditions. Meaning, if it is a parking lot and there are pedestrians around, SLOW DOWN as they may walk right in front of you.

This is just another P.C., overzealous, short-sighted excuse that does more harm than good. Imagine how quiet the city would be if all the cars made no noise. People have been complaining about noise polution for a while now.

Not that noise pollution is more important than saving lives, but what they are trying to do here is place all the responsibility with the cars and drivers when it is the pedestrians that failed to LOOK!
 
verteron said:
Why are we so concerned in the first place? Didn't your parents teach you to LOOK both ways before crossing the street? Honestly, roads are built for cars, not people, so pedestrians need to be mindful of that and stay on the sidewalk.

Drivers also need to be aware about where they are, and not drive too fast for conditions. Meaning, if it is a parking lot and there are pedestrians around, SLOW DOWN as they may walk right in front of you.

This is just another P.C., overzealous, short-sighted excuse that does more harm than good. Imagine how quiet the city would be if all the cars made no noise. People have been complaining about noise polution for a while now.

Not that noise pollution is more important than saving lives, but what they are trying to do here is place all the responsibility with the cars and drivers when it is the pedestrians that failed to LOOK!
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I'm all about personal responsibility but you are only looking at the best case scenario. When it comes to peoples lives, you always need to look at the worst case. And that includes accounting for dumb people.
 
I think the notion that an electric car is "silent" is really stretching it. If everyone was driving electric cars then the big noisy gas burning engines wouldn't be masking the sound of the quieter electric cars.

Not to mention the sound that studded tires make in the winter around here - noisiest thing out there.

I remember trying to coast into the driveway of my parents house with the engine off late one night when I was out past curfew; didn't work, they still heard me.
 
AbsintheCommando said:
Ugh, we should be rejoicing in silent cars. There's no recorded incidents of an electric/hybrid vehicle striking and injuring a blind person; why solve a problem that doesn't exist? Seems pretty foolish to reinvent noise pollution.

That said if it has to make a noise I vote for the TIE fighter sound. That would make electric cars badass like no other.
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proaction > reaction
 
AbsintheCommando said:
Ugh, we should be rejoicing in silent cars. There's no recorded incidents of an electric/hybrid vehicle striking and injuring a blind person; why solve a problem that doesn't exist? Seems pretty foolish to reinvent noise pollution.

That said if it has to make a noise I vote for the TIE fighter sound. That would make electric cars badass like no other.
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I agree, silent cars are not a bad thing from many perspectives. As someone who lives near a major residential road (speed limit 40mph) I get to hear every douchebag that has a coffee can attached to their tail pipe (thankfully those are few and far between now days), every motorcycle, and especially every muscle car who's Sunday driving owner has to prove that their car will go from 0 to 40+ in so many seconds.

Last thing I want to add into the mix is a bunch of douche nozzles with modded car sounds driving home from the bar early at 2am disturbing me.

inotocracy said:
There have been reports of Prius' hitting people who couldn't hear the car running at low speeds. Noise does have a tangible safety benefit. Loud pipes on motorcycles are a good example of that, minus the douches who do it just to be annoying, there do save lives.
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I do agree, with your point, that car noise has been a way of alerting pedestrians of their a car's presence. BUT, perhaps instead of always on, these sounds could be triggered similarly to that of a car horn. Press the button and the noise runs for set amount of time (30 seconds?). Maybe driving events could trigger them too, like pressing the break pedal.
 
Monolith2013 said:
Same thing with the BS light bulbs... Mercury levels in our water supplies have increased by leaps and bounds over the past 50 years and now we're going to switch to these "safer" and more "eco-friendly" light bulbs which guess what... Contain mercury, whereas incandescent bulbs don't.
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The amount of mercury in CF bulbs that could be released into the environment if the bulbs aren't recycled properly is *LESS* than what is released over the same time as the CF bulbs lifetime by burning the extra coal needed to power the incandescents it replaced.
 
Dude, I swear none of these people have been around a regular car in the past 5 years. You can't hear any of them coming either. This is just BS marketing. You can't hear my 99 cirrus from 5 feet away. Hell sitting in the damn thing sometimes you forget it is already running. Fucking people act like regular cars are all Harleys with zoom pipes.
 
hahaha, yes newer car are quieter, but walk down the street and just LISTEN. I can tell you when a car aproaches by the sound the tires make. Since most cars weigh more than 2 tons, tires can't be too quiet-they will make some noise :D
 
Cyrilix said:
???

The sarcasm is lost on me, if it's actually sarcasm.
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Modern cars are freaking heavy dude. The tiny SMART car weighs nearly a ton. Chevy Cobalt, nearly 1.5 tons. Honda Accord and CR-V can both weigh up to 1.75 tons with options - and these are hardly the largest cars you'll see on the road. Ford F150: 2.5 tons.
 
This stupid crap again? Fail and more fail. We need less noise pollution, not more. People have been getting run over by regular cars just fine for years, and they make more noise than this solution will.

Most of a cars noise these days is tire and wind noise anyway.

The only gasoline powered cars that make a ton of noise are old ones, and ones with aftermarket exhaust.
 
One thing about silent cars is in the city some of us bike and skateboard places(sadly I've timed it and for trips of a mile or less biking/skateboarding can take half the time of driving). Anyway most modern cars usually come up to about 5 feet behind me before I can hear them and move out of their way. They're all very quiet and it can be a real pain trying to twist around to see if there's a car coming up behind you all the time.

Also on the subject of cars impact on the environment. I'll keep driving my old beetle. It was manufactured 40 years ago as were the tons of parts needed to repair it. At this point the only realistic environmental impact it has is the use of gas and at ~30mpg, I think I'm doing pretty ok. Now compare that to getting any modern car that now needs to be manufactured, and it will get what about the same fuel economy, unless I get a hybrid, which will still take quite a while to make up the difference in environmental impact.
 
Another question is, how loud are they going to make this thing? Loud enough so that those pedestrians with iPods blasting away or yakking on their cell phone can hear it? If so, that's going to get pretty annoying for the rest of us.
 
a car that runs on batteries = stupid, nice extra lead in our waste dumps woot..

not to mention all the waste products from manufacuring (and there is extra c02) is dumped back in africa.

also c02 makes up only .05% of our atmosphere, the real planet warmer is water vapour. there is too much of it in the air. if one increase c02 than it rains. the problem they think is the concentration of c02.

what is wrong with climate change? its been happening for eons, you cant stop it ever. but alas humans want it the same all the time. infact our temps right now are cooler than they were the last global warming stage.

this all to make someone rich, hmm an electric car that does about 200miles and then a 12 hour charge time... eh??

nah we need hydrogen powered cars.

actually the biggest problem with power generation is the power delivery systems. they are very ineffective and wastefull, between 50~70% is lost from the plant to your house via the transfer medium and heat from the power regulators and exchanges.

they should rather switch to hydrogen powered cars,
improve the power delivery systems.
drop long life lights.
and force all factories to clean up the output, (ie pure c02 and pure water) in so doing one would improve your energy effeciency to reduce output. reduce output of emissions = save $$$ and the environment is happer.

we should never consider anything that may harm our children and their lives, this cost to them is huge if we do this wrong.
 
Bikes don't make any noise and you don't see anyone slapping a speaker on 'em to alert pedestrians, and they actually share walkways w/pedestrians sometimes... When I was in college in IL I was in far more danger of getting run over by a bike than a car. :p
 
cars are supposed to get out of the way of people, not the other way around. if anything the pedestrians should be required to wear flashing strobe lights and blowhorns that go off when they sense a car coming.
 
Proactive is better than Reactive? In this case, umm... no. That only works when there is an obvious problem that most agree should be remedied with a clearly understood solution, like seatbelts and anti-lock brakes. We don't have proof, we have speculation. Find me rampant pedestrian stikes that prove this problem, because I don't get it.

Laws should not be made due to speculation either, that's why so many in the past have required blood. I'm sorry, but a handful of people out of 300+ million in the US is not very persuasive. Maybe the knee-jerk changes they will make for the few, end up causing more harm for the many. We need facts, not speculation.
 
You have to realize, it isn't just the ones able to hear cars nor the idiots claim they didn't see or hear the car, but this is mostly for the blind who rely on sounds in their everyday lives in order to move about.

And, I agree with Terry that I'd rather it sound like a Tie Fighter. That would be so badass to hear it when it's accelerating or slowing down.
 
No matter how quiet the engine, a significant portion of the noise comes from tires alone. Once my car is hovering I'll understand synthetic sounds.
 
velusip said:
No matter how quiet the engine, a significant portion of the noise comes from tires alone. Once my car is hovering I'll understand synthetic sounds.
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By that point hopefully we will have effective treatments for blindness and stupidity and this won't even be necessary.
 
This is a technological solution for a social problem, namely that people don't obey traffic rules. If everyone did, there would be no issue. People wouldn't get run over because a) drivers would obey speed limits and pay attention to the road so that they can stop in time and b) pedestrians would not suddenly run onto the streets and only cross where and how is appropriate. This last one is valid for blind people too. They can cross at the same crossings as everyone else. At least around here there are audible signals which indicate when it's safe or not safe to cross.

It's a non-issue.
 
Millennium Falcon sounded better.
As for me though, I would rather have a car that you can feel, 400+ cubes of raspy cammed goodness.
 
Impulse said:
Bikes don't make any noise and you don't see anyone slapping a speaker on 'em to alert pedestrians, and they actually share walkways w/pedestrians sometimes...
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I agree. They don't require a license or insurance either, and in cities cyclists have a habit of ignoring any and all traffic laws as it suits them while simultaneously acting like they're some sort of repressed martyrs for the environment.

But, I want my electric car to sound like Airwolf please.
 
Jospeh said:
I want my car to emit a farting noise and spur sulfur wherever I go.
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LOL, I can picture a car going Pfttttttttttttt pftttttttttttttt pfttttttttttttt as it drives along.

Now,, if nissan lets you change sounds or makes it an MP3 you can upload, that'd be lots of fun.
 
All kidding aside, during a certain professional football league's Big Game I was driving around the stadium in an Escape Hybrid. If you got it just right, you could drive across the parking lot in electric only mode. It actually caught people off guard that they heard something that sounded like an electric golf cart and when they turned to see would find a full sized SUV bering down on them. Luckily we were going slow enough that no one jumped out in front of us. But it comes down to pedestrian training. We don't need more noise pollution. As newer cars become quieter, we will be facing this with gas and diesel cars along with electric, fuel cell and hybrids.
 
I personally would like the sound of helicopter rotor blades with Ride of the Valkyries playing on my stereo to accompany it.
 
Litfod said:
I agree. They don't require a license or insurance either, and in cities cyclists have a habit of ignoring any and all traffic laws as it suits them while simultaneously acting like they're some sort of repressed martyrs for the environment.

But, I want my electric car to sound like Airwolf please.
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Um, it seems you know so much about cycling. :rolleyes:

Cyclist such as myself almost always get waved through intersections. Other times I just fly through it if there's no cars. Otherwise I stop.

Drivers let bicyclists through because we have a momentum going and if we stop, we lose it all and have to regain it. Drivers are usually courteous about that and let us keep our velocity.

If you like to be an ass because your feelings are hurt, that's fine. But can the martyr talk. We no different from anyone else. It takes no effort to push a gas pedal as opposed to a bike pedal. Most of us do watch the traffic. We have more to lose than drivers do.
 
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