Inventing sound for electric cars

摘要

Carmakers are dreaming up electric car engine sounds to ensure that pedestrians can hear vehicles that lack audibl cues, executives at the Geneva car show said. Frank Welsch, responsible for technical development at Volkswagen, said: "Electric vehicle sound cannot be too intrusive or annoying and it cannot sound like anything we had in the past. We cannot simply add the sound of a combustion engine. "VW's electric cars will have speakers designed to draw the attention of pedestrians. "Performance models need to have a more assertive sound, with more bass. It has to be futuristic," he said, adding that SUVs will have a deeper sound to reflect their bigger size. The challenge is most acute for sports car manufacturers, Michael Pfadenhauer, head of acoustics at Porsche, told the company's in-house Christophorus magazine.