"The electrification of mobility presents humanity with a rare opportunity to reimagine the way cities might sound...."

"As a result of [the 2010 Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act], every E.V. and hybrid manufactured since 2020 and sold in the U.S. must come equipped with a pedestrian-warning system, also known as an acoustic vehicle alerting system (avas), which emits noises from external speakers when the car is travelling below eighteen and a half miles per hour....  Automakers have enlisted musicians and composers to assist in crafting pleasing and proprietary alert systems, as well as in-cabin chimes and tones. Hans Zimmer, the film composer, was involved in scoring branded sounds for BMW’s Vision M Next car. The Volkswagen ID.3’s sound was created by Leslie Mándoki, a German-Hungarian prog-rock/jazz-adjacent producer.... The Porsche Taycan Turbo S has one of the boldest alerts: you’re in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab as he flips the switch to animate the monster.... If Boombox, a software feature in Teslas, is any indication of what’s on the way, it will be difficult to limit the sounds that drivers play through E.V.s’ external speakers. Boombox, which was released in December, 2020, as part of a software update, allows Tesla drivers, according to its promotional literature, to 'delight pedestrians with a variety of sounds from your vehicle’s external speaker,' including goat bleats, ice-cream-truck music, applause, and flatulence."

From "What Should a Nine-Thousand-Pound Electric Vehicle Sound Like? E.V.s are virtually silent, so acoustic designers are creating alerts for them. A symphony—or a cacophony—of car noise could be coming to city streets" (The New Yorker).

The Boombox feature violated some regulation, and now it only works when the car is parked, but still, you see the problem. The basic quietness of these vehicles demands that noises be concocted for them, and these noises could be anything. You'll be warned of their approach by all sorts of odd sounds and forced to live in a city that doesn't sound like real machines doing their mechanical work but like the imagination of whatever artist or prankster the manufacturer chooses. You can call that "a rare opportunity to reimagine the way cities might sound" or the inexorable encroachment of insanity. We had a chance to quiet things down, and we threw it away.