Electric cars are great for a variety of reasons, environmental, sweet electric torque and more. What they aren't good for is that wimpy sound they make that sounds like trying to dampen the sound of a fart next to a fan. Without modifying the engine just get the appeal of that sweet engine music.

Discretely mounted BT speakers deliver sound effect of your choosing to simulate the sounds of a real engine, or whatever else you wanted. For truly realistic effect you could sync to your cars on board computer to deliver accurate pitch/volume based on RPM for more realistic sound simulation.

Sounds available would range from: pickup truck, Italian sports car, recorded human voice (IE: BRRRRRRR VRRRRRRMMM, PUTPUTPUTPUTPUT), Model T, rocket ship, chainsaw, endless fart sound loop, or other custom ideas.

The E-Motor sound kit would alert people that a heavy moving object is barrelling nearby. This would help prevent people and bicycles from getting hit. On a more convenience factor it would give you that extra few seconds to get dressed when you hear your spouse peeling up the driveway unexpected.
-- Duck Lagrange, Jun 21 2015

The Dilemma http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1578275/
, a silly movie partly about designing and electric car that sounded like a v8 [white, Jun 22 2015]

Electronic music for electric cars Electronic_20music_...r_20electric_20cars
slightly prior art [hippo, Jun 23 2015]

go-slower stripes go-slower_20stripes
[hippo, Jun 23 2015]

baked by BMW https://www.youtube...watch?v=LYIlFM5YW2E
[pashute, Jul 01 2015]

soundracer for electric cars... https://www.youtube...watch?v=bnQs4IzEhvM
[pashute, Jul 01 2015]

Audi Acoustics https://www.youtube...watch?v=HoEDLvQZg5I
This is real. ya. [pashute, Jul 01 2015]

Ride of the Valkyries https://www.youtube...watch?v=V92OBNsQgxU
How to terrify your neighborhood via Stereo [Duck Lagrange, Jul 03 2015]

Clipity Clopity https://www.youtube...watch?v=3vJxrf1r0ak
[pashute, Jul 04 2015]

You do know that most electric cars already have a speaker which plays a sound synced to speed? The idea of customisable sounds is at least new.
-- pocmloc, Jun 21 2015


Poc 'm' loc:

No I didn't! But whatever they got clearly ain't good enough because the problem is there with every electric car I've ever heard.
-- Duck Lagrange, Jun 21 2015


Definite [-] from me. I want less traffic noise, not more, and I don't want to listen to some twat who thinks it is a brilliant idea to broadcast continuous chainsaw noises.

People have eyes. Those who get run over by a quiet car because they didn't use them should be naturally selected.

As regards cyclists, they have eyes also. Besides, cycles are usually quiet themselves, apart from the whining noise made by the rider.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 21 2015


//People have eyes. Those who get run over by a quiet car because they didn't use them should be naturally selected.//

oh, bullshit. Anybody my... and your... age already has their environmental awareness set to car/truck = noise. It may be a redundant sense, but rendundance makes sense.
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 21 2015


So, in two centuries from now, we're still going to make our hovercars go peepidy peep?

Adaptation is inevitable. I'm suggesting that we make a start now.

Bicycles increasingly share the footpath with pedestrians. Should we require all cyclists to make a quacking noise, while all pedestrians whistle the Marseillaise?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 21 2015


I usually whistle or hum when I'm overtaking somebody on a sidewalk if footwear + terrain isn't already making enough noise.
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 21 2015


Speakers on a moving vehicle will have a Doppler effect naturally, for the same reasons engine sounds or sirens on a moving vehicle do. You could artificially exaggerate it though, if you know where the listener is.

I sometimes open my windows so the car stereo will alert people to my presence when I'm driving in a parking lot with the petrol engine off.
-- caspian, Jun 21 2015


People have eyes, but some of them don't function. People also have blind intersections.
-- RayfordSteele, Jun 21 2015


So, how do people cope with cyclists?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 22 2015


//People also have blind intersections// Is that somewhere for unsighted people to meet?
-- xenzag, Jun 22 2015


//So, how do people cope with cyclists?//When I cycle, I carry a large chain and heavy padlock over my shoulder for locking up the bike. I can very quickly swing it into action, and lash lumps out of any vehicle that gets dangerously close. It's proven most effective in this sort of mediaeval combat mode. Pulling a beanie hat down over my head into full balaclava mode completes the gesture. (in my dreams of course, as a cyclist in full scale revenge mode against aggressive petrol head morons in their silly tin boxes)
-- xenzag, Jun 22 2015


Funny that; I have daydreams about not screeching to a halt, because a cyclist decides he/she has the right of way regardless of what the Highway Traffic Act says, and letting them splat against my fender when I'm making a well-signalled turn onto a sidestreet and they're on the sidewalk, zooming across the sidestreet illegally, cutting me (and the vehicles behind me) off.

I used to bike between home in suburbia and 2 jobs downtown: 7am and I'm in the parks system until downtownish, at which time I take my place in gridlock, undisturbed by anybody else on the road (occasionally coasting between lanes), total 22km; 4pm and off to another corner of downtown along the busiest street, keeping pace with traffic for 8km; 10pm and back to the 'burbs, mostly along deserted industrial streets, 25km. No problems until my knees gave out.

As a driver, I have no problems with cyclists who are riding in the street at their own speed, obeying traffic laws: when traffic's light I pass them in the inside lane, and when it's heavy the extra time waiting for room to pass doesn't make that much of a difference.
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 22 2015


This was topic was exlored in a halfbaked way in the movie "the dilemma". See link.
-- white, Jun 22 2015


^ As noted on my accounts page, "dilemma" is a misnomer : it stems from the Greek "two choices", which sounds about right, but usage is "two choices with regrets either way".

The Greek di+limnj (two lagoons) would be closer in meaning: either way you end up wet.

Thus "dilemna", though a bit garbled from the original, is actually (more) correct.
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 22 2015


//it stems from the Greek "two choices", which sounds about right, but usage is "two choices with regrets either way".//

No, a dilemma, in common usage, is simply a difficult choice between two alternatives.

At the risk of dragging us back to the idea, there is something fundamentally wrong with the way people think if we expect cars to be made deliberately noisy so that people can cross the road without having to look. We might allow a few years for people to adapt, while these new-fangled lectric cars are still scarce, but eventually?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 22 2015


The regrets are the road not taken, not the road taken (though that's a viable solution set as well).

"Two choices" is "two choices": it isn't a "dilemna" unless it's a difficult choice. "gee, do I dunk myself in this septic tank or that one ?" sounds like a choice with difficulty.

However, do feel free to explain why a very large percentage of the English-speaking world use the "dilemna" spelling.

On-topic: people weren't evolutioned to notice extremely silent and extremely fast and extremely heavy : your proposal would require fences alongside roads and sidestreets, completely separating man from machine, thoroughfarically or, at the very least, require ontaking motor vehicles to beep their horn, adding to the abuses of that emergency device.
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 22 2015


// it isn't a "dilemna" unless it's a difficult choice. //

Yes, but it can be a difficult choice between two good things. For instance, do I holiday on Necker Island or on Grand Cayman?

//people weren't evolutioned to notice extremely silent and extremely fast and extremely heavy// But they did evolve to not be eaten by, say, tigers. If we arranged for all electric cars to make the noise of a stalking tiger, that would be an acceptable compromise.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 23 2015


As much as I promote Darwinism, the ability to hear various brands of tires approaching on various grades of paved roads from behind, at enough of a distance to matter, is not a single step in advancement of the human genome. Depopulation is being more effectively carried out, despite interference efforts, by war, pestilence and the Internet.

I'm sticking with "di+limnj = dilemna" : choices in life are rarely equally weighted; it's righter than the other.

Off²topically, what did you end up doing with your driveway-to-nowhere ?
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 23 2015


[Ian]- see link for zebra striped cars
-- hippo, Jun 23 2015


//all my contemporaries at school were being put on the conveyor belt to their manufactured moronic lives: driving licence; exams; partner; job; marriage; career; football matches; mortgage; kids; house; radio 4; smelling of wee; death).//

Quite true, but at least they didn't have to wait for a bus.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 23 2015


//Should we require all cyclists to make a quacking noise, while all pedestrians whistle the Marseillaise?//

That's a "yes" from me.
-- pertinax, Jun 23 2015


This is one of the main reasons why the Japanese sense of humour has never fully developed, since a large part of their Tuesday happens on Wednesday.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 23 2015


//Pitagora Suichi// Gesundheit.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 23 2015


[+] Welcome aboard (or were you here and I just never saw you?)
-- pashute, Jun 24 2015


I'm glad other people were irked by Maxwell's sociopathic comments against bikers/people who don't want to get hit by cars.

In terms of depopulation... that's a discussion for the mad scientist forums not the half baked idea forum!
-- Duck Lagrange, Jun 29 2015


I aim to irk. Sociopathy is just a hobby.

My point was that deaf people are allowed to be pedestrians and cyclists. So are people wearing headphones. I know, because I have seen them.

Ergo, it is presumably possible to not be run over very often, even without audio input from cars.

[ducklag], perhaps electric cars should generate the sound of galloping hooves, to cope with people from the era when horses were the main form of transport?

Or perhaps electric cars should make the deafening racket of a stalking sabre-tooth cat, to be better aligned with our prehistoric sensibilities?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 29 2015


I suggest that electric cars be obliged to be preceeded by a man carrying a green flag.
-- pocmloc, Jun 29 2015


By how much? For example, could he be jammed into the radiator grille?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 29 2015


Electric cars don't have radiators.
-- pocmloc, Jun 30 2015


I'm sure the law will require them to, though.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 30 2015


Some electric motors require cooling, so some electric cars will have radiators of sorts.

//I'm sure the law will require them to, though// You mean like the law requires things like turn signals ? brake lights ? reverse lights ? reverse beepers ? daylight-running-lights? horns? or are you putting radiators in a separate class for some odd reason.
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 30 2015


Perhaps we are getting a little carried away here.

My point is simple: in the long run, electric cars represent a way to reduce noise pollution, as well as other pollution. Not to take that opportunity would be insane.

Yes, there needs to be a period of accustomisation, but people already cope well with bicycles. Once the majority of vehicles on the road are electric, it becomes second nature to not step out into traffic without looking. Also, with few noisy internal combustion engines, the muted noise of an electric car becomes sufficient to warn careless or blind road-crossers.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 30 2015


Don't you think there's some kind of entropic law, which says that the noisier things can be, they will be?
-- pocmloc, Jun 30 2015


/listen to some twat/ But that is the whole point! That twat wants you to hear him! I love this scheme. My brother once recorded the chase scene from the Stallone movie Cobra (really a fine chase scene directed by some true car aficionado) and played it loud as he slowly drove around town.
-- bungston, Jun 30 2015


I don't think we should have our cars covered in pillows and sirens in order to prevent car accidents, but a little help wouldn't be a bad thing. In terms of "wild obnoxious audio from your car" ... you can do that already via your car stereo as the hilarious Cobra story has illuminated.

Anyone willing to ride around with chainsaws, or chariots is clearly the type to blast 'born to be wild' or 'dancing in the dark' at max volume anyway.

I think most human beings will make the rational decision to have their car sound like a car, but if you're insane and want to sound like you're riding a rocket go ahead! I like writing in silly ideas not because I expect people to take them into action "Well you HAVE to use the chainsaw sound..." but because I'm having fun writing my post.

A bunch of cars blasting "Ride of the Valkyries" or chainsaw sound effects would terrify their neighborhoods, but having the option to do so doesn't mean that sane people would. What would be a practical feature would be to have your wimpy silent death mobile alert incoming prey in a unique fashion.
-- Duck Lagrange, Jul 03 2015


"Clippity cloppity clippity cloppity"

That, and whatever sound scything chariot wheels used to make.
-- pertinax, Jul 04 2015


Tie-fighter noise. Definitely.
-- 8th of 7, Jul 04 2015



random, halfbakery