Sound Matters

Guest Post by Eric Peters

It’s confessional that they’re trying to make EVs sound like . . . something. Most notably, sound like what they’re trying to replace. The Ford Mach-e “Mustang,” for instance, has a button you can push that makes it sound like a Mustang – with an engine – when you floor the accelerator pedal (EVs have no gas pedal). You have probably heard the clip of the 2024 Charger EV demonstrating its “Fratzonic” sound amplification system, meant to sound like there’s something revving (and exhaling) that’s missing.

Why do this?

Well, they do it for the same reason companies that make meatless “meat” refer to it as meat and advertise that it tastes just like meat. They’re admitting what you really want but aren’t having tonight.

Automotive News ran a related confessional the other day – without realizing it, either. A reporter was sent to GM’s sound lab, where the way the sounds of a car not-yet-made can be simulated, to get a sense of how that car would sound if it were to be built.

“It has vibration, it has sound . . . it’s a tool that we use to make virtual cars come alive,” explained GM sound engineer William Seldon. The perennially smiling woman doing the interview can be seen pretending to drive a virtual car in the simulator, rotating the ersatz steering wheel left and right accompanied by sounds of an engine that sounds like a V8 revving up and down.

But GM is giving up on V8 engines.

It currently only sells two cars that still have them – Corvette and Camaro – and both of them are going electric (and crossover, in the case of the Camaro). There are still big trucks and SUVs based on them, like the Chevy Silverado 1500 and its SUV iterations, including the Tahoe, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade, that have them. But even these are targeted for termination via “electrification,” which GM’s manageress has openly stated will happen because that is what GM’s manageress wants to happen:

General Motors is committed to putting every driver in an electric vehicle on a scale previously unseen and bringing the world to an all-electric future.

So why the bother about how it sounds?

Well, it’s because GM knows perfectly well that people like the sounds they’re about to not hear anymore. At least not authentically.

“The sound, it really helps make this connection,” confesses Seldon. “What brings passion about vehicles . . .? (Everyone knows) a lot of it is that (sound).”

Italics added.

Of course. Silence is the sound of death. There is no noise in the graveyard. No more passion six feet under.

“Sound is a way to bring character to vehicles and give them personality,” the tone-deaf reporteress admits without understanding what she just said. “If there’s no sound that relates to acceleration,” she continues, obliviously, then there’s no connection to it. Just the same as what happens when you are silently whisked up to your floor by an elevator. It’s as forgettable an experience as being soundly asleep.

GM sound engineer Glenn Pietila elaborates, explaining that sounds are the means by which a driver gets feedback from the vehicle but also something more than that. “They are a way for the vehicle to communicate back to you.”

Italics added.

Indeed.

But elevators and escalators don’t communicate because there’s no need. You get in or on and they take you from A to B. Not unlike electric vehicles. In fact, a great deal like them. They all move you, in a physical sense. None move you, emotionally.

How could they?

The only thing moving is the mechanism, the motor. Why simulate the sound of the engine that’s not revving? The transmission that isn’t shifting? It is for precisely the same reason that purveyors of meatless meat describe what they’re purveying as “meat” and insist you won’t miss it because it tastes just the same – even though it isn’t.

But if meatless meat is so good, why not say it without saying anything about meat? Why not tout the tastiness of soy or cricket powder or whatever’s in those “patties” that aren’t made of meat? And if battery-powered vehicles are just as good as engine-powered vehicles, why not let their authentic sounds stand on their merits?

In both cases, the answer is self-evident.

If it were otherwise, this sad effort to replace meat with what isn’t by telling people it tastes just the same and you won’t miss it – and this tragic push to replace cars with character that make us feel something for them more than we feel for the plumbing in the bathroom – would not require all this effort to make them taste and sound like what they’re not, hoping we won’t notice what they’re working so hard to take away.

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Perfect Stranger
Perfect Stranger

Why does this guy waste his time pretending there is going to be a widespread use of electric cars? There simply isn’t enough of the material in the ground to manufacture the needed battery packs.

At best it’s a ploy to kill ICE, and then “Whoops, you can’t have an EV either surf.”

Perfect Stranger
Perfect Stranger

Wrong serf

lamont cranston
lamont cranston

Toyota has said “FU” to EVs. Love my 2022 Tundra 1794 Edition w/ its 5.7L twin turbo V8 putting out 368HP. Or is it 386? I’m mildly dyslexic.

Anthony Aaron
Anthony Aaron

So … maybe it’s 863 HP?

Anonymous
Anonymous

Me loves the sound of a carburated big block when the four barrels kick in

Anonymous
Anonymous

Imagine the cost to add sound to the car.

Anthony Aaron
Anthony Aaron

Early on, some folks said that the sound was added to these EVs so that visually-impaired folks would have some sensory input to alert them to the presence of a vehicle …

Common sense … but only so far …

Professor G
Professor G

Only an ignorant liberal could think of something so stupid. As soon as President Trump is in office the taxpayers can quit subsidizing totalitarian toys.

Rupert Smedley Hepplewhite
Rupert Smedley Hepplewhite

I’ll stick with my ‘68 Mustang, thank you very much.

Yahsure
Yahsure

The same with motorcycles. I’ve watched videos of the bikes making their gear whine noise. It just isn’t the same as a four-stroke or two-stroke motorcycles sound. EVs are just another bad idea from this administration. Harleys make a sound that can’t be replaced by an EV.

Anonymous
Anonymous

I have had a motorcycle for daily commuting. A electric bike sounds like just the thing, boring as h***, but starts every single time.

Leah
Leah

The Woodward Dream Cruise is something to behold in the way of vehicles with throaty growls. The Woodward EV Dream (Nightmare) Cruise will hopefully never happen in my lifetime.

Lager
Lager

Leah, I’m within walking distance to it, and have been for almost 3 decades. RU open to off platform communications via email?
If yes, I can petition Admin for your email addy. Or you can do the same, and Jim will forward mine to you. If not, that’s ok, too.

Lager
Lager

Thank You, frens. You made my day brighter. Capre Diem.

Anonymous
Anonymous

whoops. fat fingered that one. U know what I meant.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Is that an example of dry humor? I like it.
I don’t recall meeting you F2F fren, nor sending you any pics. So, do tell, how you came about such vital info…hearsay? Or, has a mutual acquaintance been sharing the evidence of the ID’d? ‘tsokay, if so.
Or is this perhaps playful trolling. I’ll bite.
Not denying what you say; but I’ll leave that opining to others. Vanity has it’s own demise.
Surely not a candidate as a model for one of those romance novel covers, or a copy of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. Workin’ on it, in my own sorta way. Besides, it’s what’s inside a man that emerges when interacting with other respectable people, particularly attractive womenfolk., that matters more than the physical. So, by attractive, we can speak of the visual, but also of the spiritual. Ya taught me about logos. Hat tip your way. And, that hasn’t been the only lesson learned. So, tanx, Hank.
Edit/Add: interesting that you post a music vid of a group that marc’s buddy Lewy put up on the Dreams thread.
{Unless that was a dopplegang}
Keep the tunes coming. Can’t say that I dig all the ones you offer up, but a few have caught my attention.
Keep it real Archer. Peace.
~Later.

Leah
Leah

Hey Lager. I sent Jim an email.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Got it. Ck. your mailbox. Or spam folder, for a new contact.

PSBindy

Maybe they could sew tits on the EVs to help sales. Just some free form thinking here.

Anthony Aaron
Anthony Aaron

You mean like these big girls?

comment image

fujigm
fujigm

They think the fake sound will draw customers?
Look at the sales.
It’s a losing proposition, from the charging time alone…

Leo D
Leo D

Keep in mind…

If you look at the ingredients to ‘meatless’ meat, it looks strikingly similar to dog food…

Kind of a good analogy, I think…

Visayas Outpost
Visayas Outpost

GM took the bailouts. Government Motors, explains it all.

Anonymous
Anonymous

I had some toy cars in the ’60’s that would make motor noises. Fun times.

But if you car doesn’t make car noises as an integral part of it’s natural processes, that is a toy car.

Sorry ’72 Toyota Celica, I loved you anyway.

Anthony Aaron
Anthony Aaron

At least the fake cars aren’t ‘bad’ for US … in the sense of exposing US to health problems (that’s for the 3d world children mining the precious metals that go into making them) … but the fake meats — another story entirely … what with being ‘fermented’ in calf blood and cancer cells and such … 

From a Mercola article … “Fake Meat Has A Real Problem, February 27, 2023:

“Most cultured or cell-based meats are created by growing animal cells in a solution offetal bovine serum (FBS). Aside from the fact that this “green” alternative requires theslaughter of pregnant cows in order to drain the unborn fetus of its blood, to get the cellcultures to grow fast enough, several companies are using immortalized cells.

“As reported by The Fern,
“Immortalized cells are a staple of medical research, but theyare, technically speaking, precancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous.”

“There’s no cause for concern, though, The Fern claims, because according to “prominent cancer researchers” such as MIT biologist Robert Weinberg, Ph.D., it’s “essentially impossible” for humans to get cancer when eating these cells because they’re not human cells and therefore cannot replicate inside your body.

“The problem, of course, is that there’s no long-term research to really back such claims. The fact that “cow tumors sometimes wind up in store-bought ground chuck”
and doesn’t cause a problem does not mean that a piece of meat consisting of nothing but cancerous and precancerous cells won’t have unpredictable effects.

“Why Are Cancerous Cells Used?

“The reason precancerous and cancerous immortalized cells are used in the fi rst place is because normally-behaving cells cannot divide forever. Most cells will only multiply a few dozen times before they become senescent (old) and die. This won’t work when your intention is to grow thousands of pounds of tissue from a small number of cells, hence they use immortalized cells that continue to divide indefinitely.

“Some immortalized cell lines have been in continuous use since the early 1950s. The
first immortalized cell line came from a woman with cervical cancer. Her cancer cells successfully replicated in a petri dish, ultimately becoming the cell line known as “HeLa,”short for the woman’s name, Henrietta Lacks.

“In medical science, the use of immortalized cell lines allows researchers to perform in vitro studies without the use of fresh cell samples. In the culturing of meat, it’s what allows them to create a large volume of tissue from a small number of cells that never need to be replenished.

“But immortalized cells are also, by definition, cancerous (or at bare minimum precancerous), as there’s no off switch for their replication. To circumvent this PR problem, some companies are using embryonic stem cells rather than immortalized cells. Others are using cells from living animals.

“Both of these strategies, however, also destroy the argument that cultured meat is animal-free.”

Walter
Walter

Cars are tools now, where they were a lot of other things to us in the olden days. Cars are mostly not made to appeal to anything but moving from place to place, virtue and status signaling in our neutered society.

Mostly very boring and… neutered… so, make it sound like whatever you want it to because you hate it so, and long for that bygone time when you weren’t… neutered.

ken31
ken31

We are a Lexi family. My farm “truck” is the SUV.

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