Nissan “beautiful and futuristic” Noise: Cars To Sound Like Blade Runner Spinners
Electric cars are quiet. That’s a potential problem for pedestrians and cyclists. The LATimes:
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.”
Some reports suggest that we’ll download a sound for our cars the way we do ring tones.
In other future-related transportation news, Mountain View, CA (home to Google and NASA Ames Research Center) is considering a Personal Rapid Transit system. One significant limitation:
With four seconds between each vehicle, one Ultra guideway can transport 3,456 people per hour with four passengers in each vehicle. A bottleneck to consider is the number of berths (parking spots) at a station because each berth can only move 576 people per hour.
The system costs roughly $7 million to $15 million per mile to build, and the six-foot-wide cement paths can be constructed at a speed of about one mile per month by a four-person crew.
opinions powered by SendLove.to
7 Responses to “Nissan “beautiful and futuristic” Noise: Cars To Sound Like Blade Runner Spinners”
In the PRT concept, there would be lots of the little stations close together — much closer together than stations in a train system. The idea is that demand would be distributed among the stations, lowering (though probably not eliminating) the chances that a station would be overrun by people wanting to ride, or by vehicles dropping people off. A city network would need to be designed so that high demand stations would be equipped with more berths.
A self-fulfilling prophecy! As far as my own personal noise for a car I'd like the theme from “Jaws”. Or maybe “Mr. Roboto” by Styx. Unless I'm traveling through Texas. Then I'll play “It's Raining Men” by The Weather Girls.
Thanks David. I clicked through to the website of the company, and saw that they're doing Heathrow. But I missed that simple fundamental to the concept!
As for a song, Stockboy, hmmm…. Maybe Vintage Madonna. Burning Up.
I'm all for either vintage Model T sounds, or Pink Floyd's “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.”
Important question: Will you be able to hear it inside the car?
StockBoySF, I always pegged you as more of a “Material Girl”
[...] Sound-tracks for electric cars. [...]
[...] Sound-tracks for electric cars. [...]