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Sonic Design: Dodge's Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust Sound for EVs
Why does the sound of driving remain rooted in the past?
Something we learned in design school—I believe it was taken straight from the pages of "The Design of Everyday Things"—is that product designs, right before they go obsolete, start to mimic the objects that are replacing them. (We saw this confirmed in the '90s, as cordless landline phones began to look like cell phones.)
Now, however, there's a weirdly opposite thing going on in the auto industry: Newly-anointed successor technologies mimicking the traits of the dinosaurs they're replacing. The latest case in point is Dodge's Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust system, a fancy name for a 600-watt amplifier powering speakers outside the car. Sound engineers carefully designed the sonics to make drivers of the Charger Daytona EV sound like they're burning petrol:
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Interesting that they decided to overlay that subtle whine you hear when Iron Man is flying through Manhattan.
Dodge isn't the only brand in this game, of course; and you could argue that others are more creative, like Fiat, whose Abarth EV plays a guitar riff when you hit the accelerator. But it is interesting to see that within the muscle car category, the target market still needs to have that acoustic experience, false as it is, to be prompted to buy.
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I hate the whiny sound I've been hearing from the Toyotas, just the wrong type of sound, is like a low shriek. This is much better.
Assuming there is a need for an acoustic experience, then what should it be, really?
I get that it's faintly ridiculous to mimic a V8, but it does have its undeniable charm! Not so with sci-fi-style whines or bleeps, which in a sense are just as irrelevant.
So for my money, I think Dodge has nailed it, for their particular brand. Heck, they could even upsell with new sound packs if they like, to leverage that sound system. Or maybe a tuning studio, for the enthusiasts..?
That said, I like my old Tesla's whisper just fine, though I can appreciate that my surroundings would prefer a warning before I sneak up on them!
In my area, we're plagued by internal combustion engine cars that have been modified to sound like sportier ICE cars. Very loud exhausts and pops, bangs and gurgles from the engine. Insurance costs for young drivers prohibit them from driving fast cars, so they settle for driving slow cars that merely mimic the sounds of faster cars.
"Skeuomorphism has always served the same purpose: to make the transition to new technologies feel more familiar."
As a bike commuter, I am actually all in favor of making EVs noisier, they can be whisper-quiet, which makes for nasty surprises. Though it's funny to me to see how close they came to calling it "Fart-Sonic"...
Not for nothing but new technologies mimicking older ones is a very old concept. It's called skeuomorphism and has been around for thousands of years. The Ancient Greeks carved their stone structures to resemble the features of wooden ones that preceded them. More recently we saw the original iOS in which apps were often designed to mimic the physical item they represented (such as the notes app that looked like it was made of leather and paper or the voice recorder app that looked like an old-school microphone). And The Design of Everyday Things specifically talks about how the first automobiles were designed to echo the appearance of horse-drawn carriages.
Skeuomorphism has always served the same purpose: to make the transition to new technologies feel more familiar. In this context, people may be more willing to purchase an electric car if it sounds like a gasoline-powered one, because the sound of the vehicle contributes to how "powerful" it feels. Without the sound, electric cars can strike people as weaker or less impressive than their more traditional counterparts.