Why haven’t EV makers tackled the art of great sound?

Ask any self-interested futurist – or just watch a few slick documentaries about artificial intelligence and the end of life as we know it – and it quickly becomes clear that the children of today are going to laugh themselves stupid at some of the truths we hold to be self-evident today.

I was recently buttonholed by a Serious Thinker who promised me that when my children, aged eight and 13, grow up, there are two things they won’t be able to believe we did so much of – eating meat, and driving our own cars.

To drive or be driven

Indeed, the idea of driving a car, rather than being driven by one, will be entirely absurd, and quaint, like that look your aged parents make when someone tries to explain Tik Tok to them, to my children’s children.

They’ll laugh at how risky the whole thing was, shudder at the lives we used to throw away with such shrugging indifference (a future in which humans don’t drive should lead to anear-zero road toll, theoretically, and thus an even larger population) and then complain, just a little, about how much their monthly autonomous-car-sharing service costs these days. Yes, owning your own car will also seem as old fashioned as using a typewriter does to us today.

Strap yourselves in

The point is that things change. I’m old enough to remember cars with no ABS, no seatbelts and certainly no airbags. I can also recall fuel so cheap that it didn’t matter how much of it your giant V8 burned, because my early years pre-date climate fears. We were genuinely more worried about running out of oil to burn than what it was doing to the skies or the fish.

Knowing that change is inevitable, accepting it is something else altogether, because when I try and imagine a world in which cars, even the sexy sporty ones, no longer make barking, brassy, thrusting, howling, metallic growling noises, I just can’t.

Sounding off

It struck me again this week, writing about the new Harley-Davidson LiveWire, an entirely silent EV Harley, which, quite frankly, seems as absurd, prima facie, as completely silent sex.

And it also struck me recently when I travelled to Norway, where it really does feel like every second car on the road is a whisper-quiet future-mobile, because every second car in that country is an EV.

It is … disconcerting, all that quiet. Although I know that some people love it, and some car companies, like Rolls-Royce – which is understandably excited about the potential of EVs – have been working to achieve in-cabin silence for years.

For the love of noise

But I like noise, and as much as I love driving a Tesla, I can’t help thinking they’d be more fun if they were a bit shoutier, like the human PR machine that runs the company.

My first love was motorbikes, and the noise they make, unfettered by layers of plastic and metal between you and the engine, is a large part of what makes them such joyfully stupid machines.

I’ve also developed a fondness for Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Porsches, and all of them sound pretty goddamn magnificent at full noise, too. Come to think of it, “full noise” is a term we all associate with maximum attack, with speed, acceleration, excitement.

It also goes almost without saying the Formula One was a far, far more visceral spectacle back when its engines were V10 and attending a race live without wearing earplugs would leave you with blood running down both cheeks.

What I don’t understand is why EV companies haven’t done more work on giving their cars fake sounds. ICE cars have been doing it for years now anyway, pumping artificially enhanced exhaust and engine sounds through the speakers of your stereo to make the whole experience feel more exciting.

A few years ago, I even drove a Renault that allowed you to choose the fake noises, and you had the option of both a motorcycle, which was bizarre, or a space ship, which was at least amusing.

Hollywood and beyond

Former Jaguar design guru Ian Callum told me he was very keen on giving the I-Pace he designed the “whoop-whoop” sound of the Pod Racers from the first and worst Star Wars film, The Phantom Menace. He even drove prototypes with that sound fitted, and loved them, but the idea never made it to showrooms.

Being offered a billion different engine notes and sci-fi sound effects sounds like exactly the kind of thing you’d expect Elon Musk to demand in his vehicles, and yet even Tesla hasn’t really mastered the art, so far.

At least Porsche has added some fake sound to its Taycan, although I’m reliably informed it’s nothing to get excited about.

Which is why it has given me some joy to see that BMW, at least, is tacking the problem by hiring genuine genius composer Hans Zimmer to come up with the wooshing, zipping, zoo-haa-ing sounds that its future EVs will, and must, make.

Visiting his ridiculously amazing office was fairly cool, and listening to him speak about music, and cars, was unforgettable, but the sounds he’s come up with will probably make me happy more often, and for longer.

So there is some hope that, when traditional, Dino-juice-powered engines fall silent, cars will not. Or not entirely.

There will certainly be people who want to zip from A to B in silence, so they they can fully enjoy watching Netflix, or Tik Tok, or whatever streaming service comes to dominate our commuting times. But fortunately, if the enthusiast gene is passed on to my children or grand children, there will be something for them, and for me, as well.