What? You thought electric cars didn’t make any sound. Well unless they are accelerating at full tilt, they usually don’t. Ford is however looking to give the new 2012 Focus Electric a significant whir at low speeds to serve as a warning sound to the blind and dumb. (The latter being those lemmings so immersed in their stupid phone they don’t look around when they walk).
As in recent form, Ford is previewing four different electric car sounds on their Focus Electric Facebook page for you to listen to and vote on. Each sound has a different flair, sounding like a golf cart to a Jetson’s space car zipping away.
With this level of programming and panel testing, the sound will no doubt be played through a speaker to warn pedestrians and animals at slow speeds that a car is indeed moving nearby. The quietness of electric and hybrid cars has sparked concern among activists for the blind that they do not give the tactile warning traditional cars do.
In fact regulators have been discussing ways to require some kind of warning sound, be it artificial motor sound like the ones Ford is previewing or a chime of some kind. In any case, click on the link below and give Ford’s sounds a listen. We commend them for getting people involved in what is the least expensive survey group they have.
