The Glade 4.0

A campaign backed by automakers and some lawmakers to make electric or hybrid cars noisier in a bid to increase safety for pedestrians and cyclists has taken a strange, “Blade Runner”-type twist.



Nissan sound engineers have announced that the Leaf electric car set for release next year will emit a “beautiful and futuristic” noise similar to the sound of flying cars -- or “spinners” -- that buzz around 2019 Los Angeles in Ridley Scott’s dystopian thriller based on a Philip K. Dick science fiction novel.

“We decided that if we’re going to do this, if we have to make sound, then we’re going to make it beautiful and futuristic,” Toshiyuki Tabata, Nissan’s noise and vibration expert, told Bloomberg. “We wanted something a bit different, something closer to the world of art.”

Automakers since 2007 have been exploring ways to increase the sound of electric or hybrid vehicles, which run almost silently at low speeds, after concerns were expressed by advocates for the blind and for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. Nissan says its system would turn off after the car reaches 12 mph, when, it says, tire noise is deemed loud enough to warn a pedestrian or cyclist that a car is approaching.

An act going through Congress -- The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2008 -- would require a federal ruling on whether a minimum sound level for hybrid and electric cars is needed and, if so, for the Department of Transportation to set that limit. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will release a report on the issue in January. And Nissan, alongside Toyota and Honda, has responded to concerns in Japan over sound-emission safety, and in a combined report with Japanese government agencies will present its findings later this year.

Some reports suggest that in the future, car owners will download a sound for their car the way many consumers buy ring tones for their cellphones. No word yet on whether electric vehicles will -- a la “Blade Runner” replicants -- get implanted memories, though.

ar owners will download a sound for their car the way many consumers buy ring tones for their cellphones.

Great, soon all the Star Wars-geek cars will have X-wing and TIE fighter sounds.

Would be kind of weird to be standing on the corner and hear that screamin' TIE fighter sound. I might have a bad flashback.

And it's funny, but I read something in a civil engineering magazine a couple of years back about how it would be good to start paving roads with asphalt that minimizes the sound of rubber hitting the road. That apparently accounts for much of the city-hum that us big-city dwellers hear, 24 hours a day. We might have a period of mass fatalities if that came to pass, along with a mass switchover to electric or hybrid vehicles.

Sorry, hallucinations got the better of me there, for a minute.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT DO THIS!