Soundbites: Electric Vehicles Sounds of Silence
President Obama recently signed a law that would require electric and hybrid vehicles to come with some sort of noise making device to ensure pedestrian safety. Dave Finnegan, Electric Vehicle Marketing Manager for Ford Motor Company's says Ford has been working on developing sounds for the Electric Ford Focus prior to its debut later this year.
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EV Sound A
EV Sound B
EV Sound C
EV Sound D
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"Ford has been working on kind of sound studies and determining kind of what potential electric vehicles could sound like because that noise would have to be generated they don't independently make noise because they're quite. So aside from road noise everything else would have to be manufactured, which is a great opportunity too because it provides the opportunity to make a car sound unique." :22 sec.
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No sound has been finalized for Ford, but they're currently researching the matter by collaborating with sound studio's and even gone to their Social Media sight asking customers what they would prefer.. |
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"One of the avenues we've done is we've used our electric vehicles face book page, to actually ask our friends on the face book page what sound they prefer, what do they think an electric vehicle could sound like, and we've put up four possible sounds and are looking at their feedback." :16 sec.
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Finnegan says the response has been extremely popular. |
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"We've gotten quite a bit of feedback, actually it's probably been one of the more popular things that we've put up on the face book page, Lot of great feedback from people, some people are asking the question why do they need to create a sound, but other people are providing great suggestions providing us feedback on the sounds we've put out their and what they prefer and then giving us suggestions for other sounds to consider." :24 sec.
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The four sounds being tested by Ford's electric vehicles on facebook sound like this. |
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See the above links for the four sample sounds.
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According to Finnegan sounds like these or others would most likely be mandated by NHTSA coming forward in the 2014 time frame |
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