Do Hybrids or EVs really need Fake Exhaust sounds for the Blind?

Posted by: fff In: Auto| Culture

Lotus Cars seems to be the latest car manufacturer to be jumping on the Hybrid / EV bandwagon. It took them long enough, seeing that a Tesla Roadster IS a Lotus Elise. Yes, they modified it to damn-near a nth of its life, but they still start as an Elise. You would think that Tesla would creating an EV Elise and make a little competition for Tesla, right?  Wrong. That would be WAAAAAAAAY too obvious. Lotus is actually stuffing waterproof speaker systems into a Prius(es?) to play fake exhaust sounds at low speeds and red lights.

So, it seems that one of the biggest problems car manufacturers and our government are facing is not: the 15-30% overall drop in car sales, or the effect of the dramatic increase in gas prices, or the instability and war in the Middle East, or global economic recession; it’s Political Correctness.

It’s spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure out how to make fake exhaust sounds emanate from an electric car so that blind people won’t get run over – despite the fact that research shows that only “an average of five legally blind pedestrians per year were killed in motor vehicle accidents in the US.” and “No deaths of legally blind pedestrians involved a Prius.”

OK, so granted we red-blooded, meat-eating Americans love our exhaust systems. We spend thousands of dollars on them every year. There are even rumors of how Pontiac painstakingly (and at a fair expense) modeled the exhaust note for the redesigned 2004 GTO after the mid-1960’s GTOs. It kinda goes like this:

More horsies – check.

More torque – check.

More air flow – check.

More fast – check.

More loud – check.

Replacing a factory exhaust is a given and usually one of the first things modders do to bump up the fun. But if I spend $109k on a Tesla Roadster, I want to hear that electric motor whine like nobody’s business.  I want every ricer and every knuckle-dragger to hear that Remote Control car sound as I leave them at the light. All torque – All the time.

Bark, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, bark, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

That’s a two speed Tesla trans for you straight-liners out there.

Just for fun, we put together a few of our favorite exhaust sounds. Maybe Lotus will let us load different sounds for our various moods.
Mustang GT Exhaust






Corvette Z06 Exhaust







Apache Helicopter






Lawnmower






Dewalt Drill






Electric Knife






Enjoy, fff