Electric cars are quiet. Too quiet. One of the biggest virtues of the battery vehicle is that it is virtually silent in operation. And heaven knows, in today’s marketplace, the EV needs every advantage it can get. But a quiet car can be a deadly car for the blind or disabled, and that’s led to federal government rulemaking that will require EVs to produce some kind of sound until they reach 17 mph. Exactly what those sounds will be is now being hotly debated.
I talked to Wade Newton of the Auto Alliance, which represents 12 carmakers and filed public comments last week looking to postpone the federal rule, and highly critical of the form it takes now. The alliance is walking a fine line — it supports the federal rule in principle, but doesn’t want consumers to be turned off by noisy, annoying EVs. It’s also worried about cost.
I talked to Wade Newton of the Auto Alliance, which represents 12 carmakers and filed public comments last week looking to postpone the federal rule, and highly critical of the form it takes now. The alliance is walking a fine line — it supports the federal rule in principle, but doesn’t want consumers to be turned off by noisy, annoying EVs. It’s also worried about cost.
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