Do Electric Cars Dream of Fuel Engines?

Electric Cars and the Sound of the Future

The car has been, since its inception, the crossroads of a number of different ideas of human progress and technology. It is perhaps one of the most visible and popular symbols of modernity in developed countries. Yet materials and additions that remind people that the car, this avatar of modernity, of technology, of private property, of speed and class is a human construction have never been easily assimilated. Driving processes of urban change, mass production, commodification, and pollution, the car is also inseparable from ideals of private property, social distinction, mobility, and representations and feelings of personal freedom. For some consumers, it seems the image of this humanly controlled and managed power must be disassociated from the natural world, the organic. Which begs the question: what happens when we reach a point where technology, nature and human safety collide? This intersection is one the car has always occupied, yet now it is about to have a new spin added to it. Welcome to the world of meowing cars and Nissans that play film soundtracks as you leave your driveway.

Avatar of Modernity

Toshiyuki Tabata is a Nissan Motor engineer trying to make gasoline-powered cars quieter. Responding to concerns that the silence of electric and hybrid vehicles makes them unsafe, particularly for the blind, several agencies have been looking at mandating artificial sounds for vehicles. The move is particularly ironic for Tabata, Nissan’s "noise and vibration expert", who spent thirty years trying to reduce the sound of noisy engines, only to be instructed now to re-create them.

With this new agenda, he told journalists he had used the opportunity to make his engine sounds "beautiful and futuristic": the company went and consulted Japanese composers of film scores. What resulted was "a high-pitched sound reminiscent of the flying cars in Blade Runner" (and it's worth recalling that Blade Runner was a 1982 film portraying Ridley Scott's dystopian vision of 2019). But don't expect a continuous symphony while you drive: the sound system turns on automatically when the car starts and shuts off when the vehicle reaches 20 kilometres per hour, according to Tabata. Why? Suzuki Takayuki, a spokesman for the Japan Federation of the Blind, points out that at higher speeds, electric cars generate tire noise and the engines in gas-electric hybrids kick in.

Regulating Sound

Japanese regulations say cars can’t be equipped with devices that emit sounds that can be mistaken for a horn. This may or may not explain the noisemakers being developed by car electronics manufacturers. Tokyo-based Datasystem Co., for example, makes a device selling for 12,800 yen ($165) that emits sixteen different sounds including a cat’s meow, a cartoon-like “boing” and a human voice saying, “Excuse me.”

In a nice analogy, Tabata voiced concern that “There is a risk of these things sprouting up like bamboo shoots everywhere and disrupting the general noise environment.” Regulators in charge of rules and guidelines will probably have enough time to look at new systems though, given the predictions of a slow release of electric cars onto the road. The systems will increase the price tag, but Tabata believes the “beautiful” sound may help sales. “We don’t want to destroy the brand of the electric car. We want to have something that will enhance its image.”

The Sedan and the Soya Bean

The addition of beautiful sounds to electric vehicles reminded me of other human interventions in the world of engineering and technology. Attempts at innovation in technology have often been greeted with derision, as if human inventions were merely an organic, independent species best left alone. In November 1940, for example, Henry Ford struck a sedan body made of synthetic materials for a crowd of gathered journalists, demonstrating the durability of a hard plastic made from soybeans and phenolic resin. As Sylvia Katz describes it,

"(Ford) had previously laid waste to thousands of bushels of watermelons, carrots, cabbages and onions, macerating them in his search for an agricultural plastic from which he could mould an entire car...The panels of soya protein fibre were hardened with phenol-formaldehyde resin and formed in a press. Heat and pressure thermoset the panels into their unalterable shape. Ford used the salvaged oil from the soya bean in the enamel on his cars" (Plastic: Design and Materials, London: Studio Vista, 1978, pp. 21-22).

And here is Jeffrey Meikle describing the car's reception:

"The St. Louis Globe-Democrat described the new car as 'part salad and part automobile', while the Cleveland Press thought Ford should 'strengthen his plastic by adding spinach'." (American Plastic: A Cultural History, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995, pp. 55-7).

To which those less hysterical might well have replied, "perhaps he should have."