For purposes of safety, it’s long been recognized that otherwise silent hybrid and electric vehicles need to emit some noise to warn pedestrians and others. But it turns out that even your ICE muscle car might be emitting what Drew Harwell in The Washington Post describes as “fake engine noise.”
Harwell writes, “The engine growl in some of America’s best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether.”
The 2015 Mustang EcoBoost, he adds, employs a “…system that amplifies the engine’s purr through the car speakers.”
Without the faking, he adds, “today’s more fuel-efficient engines would sound far quieter and, automakers worry, seemingly less powerful….”
Many performance car enthusiasts are not happy, and when asked by Harwell to comment, Ford’s sound-enhancement engineers were strangely silent.
Karl Brauer, a senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book, says automakers admit to drivers that they are creating fake sounds. Harwell quotes him as saying, “If you’re going to do that stuff, do that stuff. Own it.”
