2010 Nissan LEAF EV will sound like Blade Runner during launch

Posted: Sep 18, 2009

Filed under: 2010 Releases, Hybrids, Green News, Industry News, Nissan

Hybrids and electric-vehicles have been continuously criticized for being too quiet since blind pedestrians may not hear them approaching. Toshiyuki Tabata, an engineer at Nissan that spent his 30 years at the Japanese automaker trying to make gasoline engine quieter, is now consulting music composers to make Nissan’s new LEAF EV noisier and safer.

“We fought for so long to get rid of that noisy engine sound,” Tabata told Bloomberg in an interview. With electric cars, “we took a completely different approach and listened to composers talk music theory.”

So what is the Nissan LEAF EV going to sound like when it comes to the U.S. next year? Blade Runner. Tabata worked with Japanese composers and what his six-member team came up with is a high-pitched sound like the flying cars in the 1982 film by Ridley Scott.

“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,” Tabata said.

Tabata said that the system would turn on automatically when the car starts and will shut off at 12 mph.

Can’t wait to test-drive one of these.

2010 Nissan LEAF EV:

- By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Bloomberg (via AllCarsElectric)

BHA

How unfortunate, Mr. Tabata should return to his roots. ALL vehicles should make as LITTLE engine noise as is technically possible and NO NOISE if they are not moving. The presumed 'soon to be killed' blind person will have a better chance of hearing and interpreting the road noise from moving vehicles if there aren't other vehicular noises drowning it out.

By the way, how many blind people have been killed by cars that have no engine noise? I believe the number is a big fat ZERO. The vehicles that kill/maim people have 'normal' engine noise combustion engines. The victims are inattentive sighted people and/or the vehicles are driven by inattentive sighted people.