Page 20 - Winter 2020

FEATURED ARTICLE
Electric Vehicles Get Alert Signals to be Heard by Pedestrians: Benefits and Drawbacks
André Fiebig
The Rise of Electric Vehicles and the Problem of Being Quieter
Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and full electric vehicles (EVs), also known as battery electric vehicles (BEVs), are becoming more and more popular due to ecological motives, technological developments, rising fuel prices, and legal regulations and standards such as the European emission performance standards for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from new passenger cars. Public purchase incentives promote EV sales. All forecasts show a strong expectation that the annual sales of EVs (HEVs and BEVs are considered together and called EVs), and thus their numbers on roads, will significantly increase in the coming years. The nature of the EV market growth cannot precisely be predicted; it depends strongly on
assumptions influenced by potential political actions and regulations. However, no predictions question the increasing market share of EVs.
Because EV technology leads to less noise emissions, it is hoped that that there will be a noticeable reduction in road traffic noise with the phasing out of the internal combustion engine (ICE). Road traffic noise is still the dominant source of environmental noise. For example, more than 100 million people in Europe live in areas where road traffic noise levels are considered harmful to human health (European Environment Agency [EAA], 2020). Moreover, it is estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO; 2018) that in western Europe alone, over a million healthy years of life are currently lost every year as a result of road traffic noise.
Figure 1. Binaural measurement of the A-weighted sound pressure level (SPL; x-axis) over time (in s; y-axis) of scooter pass-by events (left, left channel; right, right channel). Red, scooter with combustion engine; green, electric scooter.
20 Acoustics Today • Winter 2020 | Volume 16, issue 4
©2020 Acoustical Society of America. All rights reserved.
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2020.16.4.20