We're all guilty of this:
walking down the street, staring at our phone,
and neglecting our surroundings.
Until...
you hear a car coming your way.
But the cars of the future
might sound completely different, like this:
[slow electric whirring]
That's the sound of BMW's Vision M Next.
Which was composed by Hans Zimmer, one of the
most famous movie-score composers of all time.
Or like this:
[electric revving]
That's the sound of Volkswagen's ID.3,
which was created by Leslie Mándoki,
a composer who played drums
in the European disco band Dschinghis Khan.
So, why are these cars making artificial sounds,
and why are automakers tapping music composers
to create them?
First off, what do the Vision M Next
and ID.3 have in common?
Well, they're electric vehicles,
which typically sound like this.
[silence]
And that can be a problem,
since we use our sense of sound to alert ourselves
to oncoming traffic and other potential dangers.
So if you were, say, distracted by your phone
while crossing the street
and a noiseless EV was headed your way,
you'd be more likely to get hit.
In fact, one study shows a hybrid vehicle
accelerating on its electric motor
is 1.18 times more likely to hit a pedestrian
and 1 1/2 times more likely to hit a cyclist
than a vehicle with an internal combustion engine.
Lawmakers in the US and Europe have passed
a new regulation to minimize these risks.
The solution is an acoustic vehicle alerting system,
or AVAS, which requires hybrids and EVs
to emit a sound that alerts pedestrians
and cyclists to their presence.
But sound doesn't only make EVs safer.
It's also a way for automakers to give their cars
a voice, or a sonic identity.
Just as a Porsche has an unmistakable sound,
something like Nissan's Leaf can now have its own sound,
handcrafted by a musical genius, like Danni Venne,
the lead producer and creative director
for the Nissan Leaf AVAS tone.
Danni Venne: When the project came in,
it was framed as, like,
"There's a new regulation in town,
and we're gonna put sound to the regulation.
And I had to kind of turn my head around
to think about, if I go to buy a,
look for a car, go shopping for a car,
when that car rolls in front of me,
the way it looks, the way it moves,
and the way it sounds is gonna have
some sort of emotional impact
that's gonna make you be like, "I want that."
Narrator: Nissan, like other automakers,
wanted to turn its AVAS tone into a marketing device.
Simply put, the AVAS tone would become
an audio logo for the Nissan Leaf.
And who better to compose a sound like that
than a composer or a team of people who have
studied sound and understand how to use it
as a tool to market products?
But first, Venne and her team had to figure out
what instruments to use.
Venne: That piece of audio I'm talking about
is going to be about
two seconds or less, looped.
And so two seconds of sound that's looped
has to sound smooth.
We experimented with a wide range of instruments.
That said, I wanted to explore
what suggests movement and power and energy.
Narrator: Venne and the rest of her team
experimented with sound she categorized as
pulsating, wavering, and smooth.
Pulsating sounds mimic an engine
in the way they bounce up and down abruptly.
Wavering sounds are similar, but are much smoother
in the way they bounce between notes.
And smooth sounds are, well, smooth,
solid tones that don't waver or bounce at all.
Venne: You really have to go for instruments
that don't have a hard attack to them.
Wind instruments, flutes, oboes, clarinets.
The tone in wood, in wind instruments
can be more like this, right?
It can kind of waver a bit,
have a little wave to them.
Narrator: Finding tones and instruments that work
was only the start of composing the AVAS tone.
The sound had to be active.
For every kilometer per hour,
the tone increases in pitch and speed by 1%,
up to 30 kph, or 18.6 mph.
This way, pedestrians and cyclists
have an audio cue of what the car is doing.
After 30 kph, there's enough wind and road noise
to alert pedestrians to a car's presence.
[instrument humming]
Danni: This might be a sampled flute.
Can't remember at this point.
You can also, I started blending the pulsing sounds.
[instrument pulsing]
Some of these pure, organic tones,
even though I like them,
they ended up sounding a little spooky.
You know, a little like ghosts.
Some of the smoother ones, like
[instrument humming]
that...
even though this feels a little bit like...
that feels a little bit, to me, like a vacuum cleaner.
Though it did suggest a certain amount of power.
What we found, though, was we kept moving more
towards sounds that had a pureness to them.
And that led us to use
a lot of sounds that were synthetic.
Even though they might be warm and rich sounding,
but using sounds that came from the synthesizer
and then really manipulating those sounds.
Layering them with different ones, 'cause we could
have that complete control and stability.
And I think that idea of, like, control and stability
translates, then, emotionally,
to, like, good engineering.
Narrator: While increasing in pitch and speed,
the sound had to stay within the required frequency range.
Once Venne and her team had
a sound that Nissan approved,
they used an equalizer to process the audio,
adjusting various frequency ranges to make sure
it met all the requirements of the regulation.
Venne: That's when it got to be very difficult
to adjust things too much further
than where the regulation needed to be.
My engineers and mixers were
going in with a very fine-tooth comb
to just EQ it exactly.
And that last stage of it was,
I wouldn't call it creatively inspiring.
It was challenging. It was very challenging.
Narrator: Designing an AVAS sound
is much more complicated than it seems.
The tone is twofold: On one hand,
it needs to alert pedestrians and cyclists
to a car's presence to mitigate collisions.
And on the other, it needs to radiate a pleasant tone,
one that will attract people to the car and the brand.