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The golf market has remained flat in North America. Whereas, it has grown worldwide. A trend is seen where the number of young adults and adults over the age of 65 years involved with the game has increased. The demographics in golf showing the most growth also have high standards for the operation of the golf car. They have transcended their expectations to align with some of the qualities expected of automobiles. There is a shift in consumer expectations. Moreover, the market competition has also increased. This drives the OEMs to deliver refined golf cars with NVH being a key aspect in development. This paper showcases a recent study to improve the powertrain N&V performance of an internal combustion engine golf car. Primarily, a test-based approach is followed. Chassis rolls and on road testing are performed for benchmarking and target setting. System and component tests are performed to root cause issues.

Road noise and speech intelligibility are becoming ever more important, irrespective of the vehicle size, due to vehicle refinement as well as connectivity with mobile communication equipment. With better aerodynamic designs, development of refined powertrains, and a tectonic shift from I.C. engine to electric motors, road noise and wind noise will become more apparent to the customer and hence will become a priority for automakers to refine their vehicles. This paper describes the efforts undertaken to identify the road noise paths and develop countermeasures for a compact SUV vehicle. A hybrid test/CAE approach was followed to improve road noise performance of this vehicle. This effort involved developing tire CAE models from physical hardware and creating synthesized road-load input from data taken on roads.