As the 'onslaught' of Hybrid vehicles becoming more and more apparent, pessimistic people had started to worry about these very silent vehicles. It has been said that Hybrid vehicles pose a threat to the blind, where they rely on 'listening' to oncoming vehicles for road crossing or everything else they do.
Lotus has come to the rescue (We weren't really sure why it's Lotus and not BOSE, or Sony or Bang & Olufsen) and had did a prototype on a Toyota Prius equipped with a water proof external speaker mounted in the radiator that will emit the sound of a V8 engine rumble when the electric engine is operating, and will mute off when the petrol engine kicks in.
How 'difficult' placing a speaker that is water proof in front of the engine to emit sounds is beyond us, as a chassis engineering specialist became the first one doing it really tells how 'Hi-Tech' it is for such a system. Or more so, how it's so easy to be the first one answering questions no one asked.
Most sounds emitted from cars that we hear daily are not the sound from engines, for a matter of fact, most are sounds generated by our tyres rolling.
What's our verdict? After self popping bonnets that protects pedestrians, and then Toyota's research on external air bags for pedestrians and now a V8 speaker? Utter complete waste of the earth's resources in trying to grab headlines with something extremely low tech and naming it 'External Sound Synthesis'.
How about giving every deaf and blind people in the planet an RFID tag so when they decide to cross the roads, every single car within a radius of 100 meters will be limited to a maximum speed of 5km/h ? And would stall if the vehicle ventures closer than 20 meters.
