Technical Paper
Electric Vehicle Sound Quality
1999-05-17
1999-01-1694
Environmental concerns as well as regulatory requirements are driving the development of alternative vehicle propulsion systems. Electric vehicles (EV's) are attractive because they emit no pollutants. In this paper, we examine the sound quality characteristics of wind and powertrain noise in electric vehicles. Sound quality is an important attribute of EV's, because the expectation is that they will be very quiet due to the absence of an internal combustion engine. As we show in this paper, the absence of engine noise is both a blessing and a curse for sound quality. For wind noise, the results show that electric and gasoline vehicles have equivalent wind noise loudness levels at all speeds. However, at lower speeds (50-60 mph), the EV is judged to have more wind noise even though the level was the same as the gasoline vehicle! The difference is that, in the EV, there is no engine noise to mask the wind noise.