10 ms·

The "externality" most discussed is generally carbon emissions, for obvious reasons. It used to be particulates, for local health reasons. Noise rarely gets a m

• vinw 10y ago
  Most road noise is from the tyres though, modern IC engines are pretty quiet.
  • VMG 10y ago
    Truck engines? Probably depends on the speed as well.
  • tsomctl 10y ago
    Dirt bikes and quads have pretty loud exhausts. And people with 4wd trucks like to put aftermarket exhaust on them because they think they get better performance.
    • vinw 10y ago
      Dirt bikes aren't "traffic". 4WD trucks are a regional thing, and that market will probably never be replaced by electric vehicles!
      • netcan 10y ago
        Why not?
        • douche 10y ago
          One reason: It's much easier to carry a five gallon jerry-can of gas or diesel with you when you head out into the boondocks, just in case, as opposed to spare battery packs sufficient to get you back out to civilization.
          • cstross 10y ago
            However: plug-in hybrids would be an option. (Diesel pack and fuel tank for off-grid use, electric motor and battery good for ~20-50km as well for use on short trips about town/daily commutes.)
            • dsfyu404ed 10y ago
              Most of a second drivetrain, system to make them work together, a bunch of batteries and the associated weight makes a lot of sense in a harsh environment, not to mention the increased cost for something that will get the crap beaten out of it. There's a reason oil field trucks tend to be the most minimal trim available. More stuff -> more stuff to break -> more complicated service -> waste of money. Automatic windows are a convenient but hard to justify when they cost more up front and cause more downtime over the life of the vehicle. Ditto for most other luxury features. You know what sucks, having a Prius that won't use its electric powertrain because the software is trying to protect the integrated A/C compressor from damage because a rock kicked up by another vehicle was the straw that broke the camels back and causes the condenser to leak out refrigerant. Now imagine not being able to use half the powertrain of a pickup you're trying to do work in. See the problem? Sure you could do a different A/c system but you're probably giving up some other important performance metric (like fuel economy) or you could let it ruin the compressor (but then the customer will complain or you'll waste money replacing compressors under warranty) GMC made a hybrid pickup. It was cool because it could be used as a power source to run tools at a jobsite. It didn't sell. They canned it.
  • _ph_ 10y ago
    By my experience, IC engines are only quiet when the car is coasting, but not when it is accelerating or has to go uphill. Having compared the driving noises of electrical and ICE cars driving past me, the noise reduction is quite significant. Even more, when accelerating at traffic lights, or when cranking the car.
  • samcheng 10y ago
    Having daily driven a dual-motor electric car, two turbodiesel cars (both modern and classic), and a modern Honda V6, I can tell you that the electric car is significantly quieter, especially at lower speeds and when accelerating, both inside and outside the car. You're right that tire noise is significant, though, and that electric cars (and trucks and buses!) are not completely silent. They are definitely MUCH quieter than the drum-drum-drum of an accelerating diesel truck engine, though! Now, if only they could get rid of that annoying beep-beep-beep a reversing truck makes...
    • cstross 10y ago
      The reversing beep-beep ain't going to go any time soon -- it's a audio warning to prevent workers being crushed under reversing trucks. (It might go if and when reversing cameras, which are now standard on automobiles, become standard on trucks ... but there are headaches implicit in adding them to articulated lorries: what about side blind-spots? What about the trailer, as opposed to the tractor? What if a trailer-camera isn't hooked up -- should it be impossible to reverse an electric tractor if it has a trailer hook-up but no signal from the camera on the trailer?)
      • samcheng 10y ago
        Maybe automated trucks won't need that beep, once they can be trusted to stop before crushing anyone behind them?
        • Avshalom 10y ago
          You'd still want something shouting "get out of the way, we're working here" because you don't want to have to stop.
          • samcheng 10y ago
            We'll know automated cars have truly arrived when they start using the horn against humans.
      • 10y ago
  • saosebastiao 10y ago
    Except when they choose not to be.
  • vmarsy 10y ago
    The tires noise probably has to do with the road and tire quality. I remember walking on a quiet street in the suburbs and being very surprised by a seeing a Prius driving past me as I didnt hear it coming at all.
  • astrodust 10y ago
    You can't rev an electric car when impatient. You don't have to shift gears. When using engine braking it's quietly absorbing energy, not letting out an angry BRAAPPPPP. If you're deaf, sure, combustion engines are quiet. Otherwise they're often quite loud.
• ljf 10y ago
  This - after leaving the city to live by the sea I hugely notice all traffic noise when I come back to London - it's just never ending. Much of London is blighted by aircraft noise too - again I never gave it much thought and believed my London garden was tranquil and calm, but in my new place I can easily go hours without being disturbed. And when a plane does fly over it's so much higher - I can't believe West London puts up with it. That said - I now really notice the diesel smell and the fumes in central London. I used to cycle through it every day and couldn't see what the problem was, but as soon as I get off the tube I can smell the stink of smoke lorries and buses.
  • Symbiote 10y ago
    > And when a plane does fly over it's so much higher - I can't believe West London puts up with it. I lived at various times in Fulham, Putney and Richmond, and worked directly under the flight path. What choice do most people have? All the MPs in the area are against adding a runway at Heathrow, as are all past and current mayors of London, but expanding the airport still hasn't been ruled out. Anyone unfamiliar could look here, and see the trail of planes approaching LHR over London: https://www.flightradar24.com/51.51,-0.19/11 https://www.flightradar24.com/51.51,-0.19/11 (flights are restricted at night, which will be about 2200-0400 UTC)
    • ljf 10y ago
      True - we don't have a lot of choice sadly (other than to live east) but the blight it adds to some stunning areas in London and to the south west is insane. We wouldn't put up with trains being that noisy!
    • crossman 10y ago
      I lived in Fulham for 2 years and on the one or two days that Heathrow was shut down there was a strange unsettling silence. It would usually take a good 15 minutes to realize there wasn't a plane flying overhead every 90 seconds.
      • saganus 10y ago
• ssharp 10y ago
  This will help reduce engine noise, as well as stink and heat from the truck's exhaust, both of which will be nice. Buses are also loud in city streets and both trucks and buses use braking systems that are fairly loud. I don't know what braking systems these will use but I'm guessing it still needs to be pretty heavy duty and could still be loud.
  • masklinn 10y ago
    > I don't know what braking systems these will use Er… regenerative? Short of emergency braking which should almost never be necessary in city traffic.
    • sp332 10y ago
      Regenerative brakes typically can't handle hard braking braking. In Teslas for example it's paired with regular disc brakes, but those brakes are rated for 100,000 miles because of the reduced wear. I would expect this truck to have regular (loud) air brakes installed, but they might be used less often if the driver brakes early & gently enough for regen to do the whole job.
      • masklinn 10y ago
        > Regenerative brakes typically can't handle hard braking braking. Which I very specifically noted…
        • sp332 10y ago
          But if you're driving a 20-ton truck, even routine braking will probably be "hard" braking.
          • function_seven 10y ago
            Presumably if the motors are beefy enough to accelerate that 20-ton truck, they're beefy-enough to regeneratively brake it as well, right? I mean, still not as quickly as friction brakes can, but at a comparable level to passenger car regenerative braking.
• calvinbhai 10y ago
  apparently, such noise also affect the biosphere. Birds and animals change behavior based on this noise. Its one reason why traveling in developing/under-developed countries feels so different. The noise levels are very different.
• lastyearman 10y ago
  Noise is the main reason I'd like to leave the city to live in the country. To me it just feels insane how little of a concern this is to most people. Cities could be really nice places to live if they didn't allow cars in them, but instead they're ruined by pollution (noise and emissions).
• dragonwriter 10y ago
  > But, if someone from an all electric future was dropped off in 2016 i think they'd really notice noise above everything else. Given the move to regulate hybrid and electric vehicles so that they make as much noise as traditional ICE vehicles (notionally, as a safety measure of visually-handicapped pedestrians), I'm not sure that that's the case.
  • hx87 10y ago
    Given that the noise from electric vehicles is intentionally generated, it can be much more pleasant than ICE noise while still being audible.
  • outworlder 10y ago
    This. The mandatory noisemaker is annoying. Not sure what it accomplishes either, as the driver is supposed to be avoiding pedestrians.
• skrause 10y ago
  Unfortunately electric cars won't solve the noise problem. The graph on http://www.leiserstrassenverkehr.bayern.de/laerm/entstehung/ http://www.leiserstrassenverkehr.bayern.de/laerm/entstehung/ (a German government website) compares the engine noise ("Antriebsgeräusch") with the tire noise ("Rollgeräusch") for different speeds ("Gesamtgeräusch" means "total noise"). The yellow line is for trucks, the blue lines for cars. As you can see at a speed of 40 kph (25 mph) a car's tire noise is already higher than the engine noise and at even higher speed the engine noise doesn't really matter anymore. So even if your electric car engine is absolute silent, the total noise at speeds above 30 mph won't be all that different. The only real solution is electric cars plus significantly reduced speed limits.
  • Retric 10y ago
    Engines have a different sound profile that makes comparing the sounds produced a little more complex. Further, on a highway the worst offenders have much worse engine noise than average. Also, you can do a lot to reduce tire noise with things like low-noise asphalt, but it's rather pointless when your also using an IC engine. http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/features/feature126199/ http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/features/feature126199...
  • serge2k 10y ago
    > significantly reduced speed limits. Booo... Booo skrause. Boooo. I don't know german, does that account for road type? I know the tire noise in my car is freaking horrible on the lousy plain concrete highway, but drops off nicely as soon as I hit any nicer material.
    • syncsynchalt 10y ago
      Why boo? Reduced speed maps to vastly reduced pedestrian death and injury, encourages increased bicycle road share, and allows reduced lane sizes which increases the usable land in urban environments. All good things IMO.
      • serge2k 10y ago
• cmurf 10y ago
  I'm on a balcony right up against national forest land as I'm typing this. My typing is the loudest thing I hear. If I stop typing, I don't just hear birds and wind, I hear insects. Lots of them. When I lived in NYC, it was incredibly loud, I was very aware of this, there's nothing at all silent about it. I think after a number of years people aren't merely used to it being noisy, they have some amount of permanent hearing damage, they're just not phased by delivery trucks banging around, sirens blaring, wheels on tracks squealing. There is certainly a lot of room for improvement when it comes to noise.
• B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  > Noise rarely gets a mention. Today I was gifted with hearing a weed-whacker running continuously for a couple of hours outside my window. I am now a more morally resilient critter, according to Friedrich "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger" Nietzsche. (He wrote that the year before going totally bonkers, so it might not work as advertised, like much else.)
• greglindahl 10y ago
  Particulates and stuff that forms ozone are both still a big deal. The reason that the SF Bay area air-quality district funds free electricity at public car chargers is to reduce smog in the Bay area.
  • mikeash 10y ago
    Indeed. For example, the VW emissions scandal was entirely about particulates and similar. The fix will likely increase CO2 emissions. Local pollution and CO2 emissions are somewhat at odds with each other, especially for diesels.
• garyclarke27 10y ago
  So true, the only time I ever experienced true silence, was off piste skiing in St Anton, Austria. Stopping for a rest in a deserted valley, it was so beautiful and the silence was so peaceful, I was mesmerised until the silence was broken by a bird singing a few miles away. An incredible experience I'll never forget.