Nissan electric vehicles soon to feature soundtracks of KITT and friends

One of the pleasant side effects of electric vehicles is that their motorless operation means a reduce in noise pollution. While one here or there won’t add up to much of anything, the difference when considering an entire city full of silent electric vehicles becomes quite apparent. Gone would be the annoying sounds of idling cars. Imagine how odd it would be to be standing in the middle of Times Square and see hundreds of cars whizzing buy, except all you could hear would be faint tire noise, people talking, and birds chirping. However, that will all be but a dream if politicians have their way. It seems the silent nature of these beasts is a cause for concern, or at least for those who don’t look where they’re walking or for oncoming traffic when crossing the street. Silent future cars are “too” quiet.

Apparently, enough people have already been injured because they failed to see a two ton plus silent electric vehicle coming at them. In defense of some, particularly the blind, they can’t help it and for them this issue is a real concern. Still, adding useless “features” to a device or car that don’t really need to be there is in my mind dumb. At least Nissan is having some fun with it as they are reported to be looking at adding more “futuristic” sounding engine effects. How cool would it be to watch some ho-hum styled car drive by yet sound like it came straight out of Bladerunner? Better yet, what about a Toyota Prius sized car cruising along belting out X-Wing Fighter sounds? Hey, if they’re going to go all futuristic, you might as well go over the top no? Is your geeky self excited?

TechDirt
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