Electric vehicles were supposed to make the world quieter. However, what they've done is expose a noise problem that's been hiding in plain sight: as engine noise fades away, rumble of tyres on asphalt becomes the dominant sound on the road.
The problem is a measurement gap. Current vehicle noise approval tests happen on a single, specially prepared stretch of asphalt under tightly controlled conditions but real roads are nothing like the test track. They're messy, a mix of surfaces with expansion joints and potholes. That mismatch means regulators and manufacturers don't have any data on how vehicles actually sound in everyday driving, even as noise limits keep tightening.
We encountered the cars being used for the research outside our hotel in the Moselle area. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a photo of the Porsche they were using, which was possibly the most beat up and still road legal electric car I have ever seen. It was properly ugly, especially with all the sensors Gaffa taped to it. This Audi is no beauty queen either.
The project runs from October 2023 to September 2026, so we were lucky to see them in action.
2 comments:
There needs to be some sort of noise emitted by a 'lectric vehicle.... we use our ears to navigate the world as much as our eyes....
The first electric 2CV of recent times was converted by three Japanese students at Chelmsford Uni.... they drove it to the Austrian World Meeting of 2CVs in 2001..... whilst at the meeting, as they drove around, they had a lot of extremely near misses.... so many, that the organisers asked them to stop touring the site in the car.... so they put it on dispay in the main tent!!
But the damned things are dangerous if silent... especially when driven on grass!
And replace one noise with another just as we have the chance to make the world a quieter place??
No thanks. I'd prefer everybody be just a little more observant
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