The Accessibility Corner - covering the sounds an electric car could make when in use.

The podcast discusses the importance of sound in vehicles for people with visual impairments or distractions. The speaker shares a personal experience of almost getting hit by a car because he couldn't hear it. They then talk about how Nissan developed a sound for their electric vehicles to alert pedestrians. The sound is a two-second loop that increases in pitch and speed as the car accelerates. The goal was to create a unique sound that conveys innovation and distinguishes electric vehicles from traditional ones. The podcast ends by mentioning the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards that regulate the sound requirements for vehicles. Welcome to Accessibility Corner with George Saval. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about something that hasn't really been discussed much, but it should be, which is the sound that a vehicle makes. Yes, for those who are blind or maybe have some kind of distraction, you know, holding the phone while they're walking, sound is very important. One time, I almost had a car hit me because I was going to Wendy's near the apartment I used to live at. And since I'm blind, I'm not listening for traffic as I cross the street. And as I was crossing the street, I didn't hear nothing. However, I did hear some tires, but not the sound from a motor. So I stopped, and sure enough, it was a car. And even the young man put his head out. He goes, are you okay? I said, no, it's fine. He didn't hit me or anything. I want to cross this story from NPR regarding the sound or the noise that cars make, if that makes sense. So here's that story. My name is Daniel Van, and I'm the executive creative director here at Made Music Studio. What I do is something special called sonic branding. And so that's the strategic use of sound and music to help brands build their own identity. In 2017, we were approached by Nissan to develop a sound for their electric vehicles that were going to be coming out in subsequent years. And that sound would be the sound that you hear when the vehicle is approaching you, so an external sound of the vehicle. We love that these electric vehicles are quiet. There's no noise pollution with them, or it's minimal noise pollution. But it's still a safety hazard. And it's something that, because it's mandated now, there's an opportunity and a need to look at that sound through the lens of the brand and through the lens of marketing. So for the Nissan Leaf, the deliverable is a two-second piece of audio that's going to be looped on a piece of hardware inside the car. When a car is idling, you're just going to hear that one piece of audio looped. It shouldn't sound smooth. It shouldn't sound like it's hiccuping every two seconds. It has to be a perfect loop. As the car increases, the pitch that you're hearing, the note that you're hearing, is going to increase in pitch and speed 1% per kilometer per hour up to 30 kilometers per hour. It's not a melody. It's not a piece of music. It's not even a singular sound. Instead, that deliverable is a looped piece of audio that has to stretch like an accordion or like taffy and then come back together. We put the sound into three categories to explore it. And one category was smooth sound, things that were very fluid. The second category would have been more wave-like. So within that two seconds, the sound might have moved a bit, right? It might have pulsed. And then in the third category was sound that had actually quite a bit of motion in it. Very early on, you start to realize that if you're trying to convey that this car is innovative, that this car is different than a gas engine car, having too many moving sounds really doesn't depict that this is a new technology. It sounds like a weirder version of an internal combustion engine. When I hear an electric vehicle on the street, I have such a different appreciation for all the design considerations that went into that vehicle, including the sound that I'm hearing as it comes towards me. I will be including a link in the show notes to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards that provides more information that is required by automobile makers in regards to the sound a vehicle should make.