Getting rid of 50% of your car detecting senses doesn't seem like a good idea
When vehicles past a certain volume (which are not aggressively streamlined to shatter human-powered landspeed records) move faster than 25 kph (15 mph) they displace enough air that they are quite loud.
An automobile-sized vehicle isn’t some kind of terrestrial ninja when its engine doesn’t make noise. Depending on make, model and speed, the volume of displaced air is significantly louder than the engine running at constant velocity.
That said, the "cars make noise go vroom" argument hasn't really worked for decades now. Modern mufflers mean most unmodified cars aren't loud enough to be clearly heard over background noise in an area with lots of cars. Pedestrian safety is absolutely a problem that's worsening, but I don't think that "make cars noisier" is the solution.
Barring the ideal (to me) solution of fewer cars in the first place, what seems most promising to me is making the infrastructure itself more pedestrian-friendly. I was impressed to see what Amsterdam's city center did with encouraging cars out onto the thoroughfares and out of the places where people are walking. They didn't seem to have the same "Waze addicts blowing through stop signs on residential streets" problem that we have in North America. Nor did they have the same problem with stroads and their obnoxious traffic patterns that set everyone who uses the on edge. It seemed to make transportation both safer and more pleasant for everyone involved.
Tires often make more noise than car engines nowadays. I live along a busy street and often I can't audibly distinct a Tesla from an ICE except for a faint hum. They are both as loud when passing by.
There's a significant gap between theory and reality, but I'm not sure noise pollution is the answer.
It might not even require GPS or anything complicated; just respond to car’s radar squawks, so that it can measure the distance and relative speed from the delay and Doppler shift. You’d need to use frequency that bounces around nicely, to “get around” other cars blocking the line of sight. We can’t do that with passive pedestrians, because we can’t tell the echo from pedestrian from the (also moving, like other cars) background. This could work more reliably and at much higher distances.
Of course someone must have tested that already; I’d be grateful for a link :-)
To be fair, the Charger name was created long before it meant "thing you use to plug into an electric device", and the Charger is a very popular vehicle in the Dodge lineup. And you don't abandon popular models without generating negative PR. So Dodge didn't really have a choice.
Plus, they can use the pun in witty commercials.
Fast cars are dangerous on our streets and responsible for a significant number of deaths on the road. It wouldn’t be bad if they killed the brand for society.
It’s too bad that “car that gets you great mileage and helps protect kids in driveways and crosswalks” doesn’t sell.
We lost that battle 20+ years ago, when SUVs and giant trucks became so popular.
It also gets great mileage and helps protect kids in driveways and crosswalks, and sells rather well.
Those are literally the cars that sell the most. There's a reason manufacturers focus on Crossovers, and Volvo focuses on safety - it sells.
The reason for this are the tires which have gotten so wide over the past decades that they are now the sole noise you hear from a normal car.
BEVs are not running tires that are any different sizes than similar positioned gas cars. The model 3 is running similar tire sizes to the German sports sedans of similar positioning. The leaf is running similar sizes to other hatchbacks. Etc.
In general, cars are running larger tires in every dimension, but cars are also larger in every dimension.
Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Charger) the name has been around for 56 years (since 1966). Or 58 years for the "show car" version of 1964.
> Electrobat! Is that not a great name? It belongs to the first commercially viable EV effort. Philadelphians Pedro Salom and Henry G. Morris adapted technology from battery-electric street cars and boats and got a patent in 1894. At first very heavy and slow (like a trolley car, with steel “tires” and 1600 pounds of batteries onboard), their Electrobat [at left] evolved to employ pneumatic tires and lighter materials so that, by 1896, their rear-steer carriages used two 1.1-kW motors to move 25 miles at a top speed of 20 mph. Electrobats and another electric by Riker won a series of five-mile sprint races against gasoline Duryea automobiles in 1896.
The future looks bleaker with each passing day
My uncle has a country place, that no-one knows about
He says it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law
Sundays I elude the ‘Eyes’, and hop the Turbine Freight
To far outside the Wire, where my white-haired uncle waits
Jump to the ground
As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline
Run like the wind
As excitement shivers up and down my spine
Down in his barn
My uncle preserved for me an old machine –
For fifty-odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream
I strip away the old debris, that hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta, from a better, vanished time
Fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar!
Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime…
Wind in my hair –
Shifting and drifting –
Mechanical music
Adrenalin surge –
Well-weathered leather
Hot metal and oil
The scented country air
Sunlight on chrome
The blur of the landscape
Every nerve aware
…
Personally, this one seems about as appealing as bringing back the manual ignition advance on gas-engined cars.
Not saying that's right or wrong. Only that it's not strictly a pedestrian thing.
Since in EVs it's more or less simulated, it would make since to have more than one setting and one of those to be off.
p.s. The Dodge Charger has been ine of Dodge's most successful model. Gazillions of recognition has been invested in that model. They're not going to abandon that. In fact, the name makes more sense as an EV.
> and one of those to be off.
It definitely is, Europe wouldn't pass a law mandating slow speed EV artificial noise if it was just a matter of branding
That said, it doesn't mean a manufacturer can't use sound to their benefit, regardless of what regulations says.
In fact, I believe in Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" he sites an example (or two) where sound was part of the design of a product.
When a significant part of your brand is noise pollution, your brand needs updating. [0]
[0] According to Autoweek, "Loud pipes save lives" is false https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a35952569/loud-p...
BTW, this clutch idea is really really dumb.
Doesn’t it make an obnoxiously amplified EV high pitched whir? That was the impression I got from the unveiling
I'm so glad this monstrosity is not cleared for European roads.
If the silence of the vehicles increases the likelihood of lower speed collisions then that's potentially a problem.