Nissan launches singing electric car to save lives

With the aim to making driverless cars safer, Nissan has revealed its ‘singing electric car’ for the safety of pedestrians.

The automobile company Nissan unveiled its new electric and autonomous car at the Tokyo Motor Show last week. It named the vehicle’s new feature as ‘Canto’, an Italian word for ‘I sing’. The car gives out a sound like a demonic string quartet tuning its instruments, so that it could alert pedestrians (even at low speeds) that an electric, driverless vehicle is incoming.

The company claimed this feature to be a significant one for what the Nissan Intelligent Mobility. Nissan’s Executive Vice President, Daniele Schillaci talked to the press saying, “What you just heard was the sound of the future. It is a sound that we call ‘Canto.’ Soon, it will be heard from our Nissan cars on streets around the world.”

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According to Wired, the Japanese car manufacturer previously launched its first pedestrian warning ‘LEAF’ in 2011 – which is the world’s best-selling electric vehicle (EV) – and this new car just advanced the model, adapting its tone and pitch as the car decelerates, accelerates and reverses.

While talking about LEAF, Schillaci expressed, “In just one month, we have already sold more than half of what we sold last year. LEAF is not just an EV, it as part of this intelligent mobility because EV technology alone is not enough to move people to a better world.”

The designers created a car whose noises put pedestrians on high alert but made sure to design sounds that ‘enrich the aural environment of the typical city street’. The car is lower, wider and sportier as compared to the pervious LEAF, with the aim of this design to get greater accessibility of the market, reported ars Technica.

EVs have engines that function more quietly than the conventional combustion engine. Though being a plus point for the environment, the engine can cause difficulty for pedestrians or cyclists, and especially for the visually impaired. A report by the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) showed that there is 35% chance for EV and hybrids for pedestrian-involved crash and 57% chance to hit cyclists. Thus, Nissan’s Canto feature will serve as a warning signal for both cyclists and pedestrians.

However, Nissan is not the only one with this sound producing feature. There are others like the Chevrolet Volts that chirps, Toyota hybrid Rav4 that beeps, and Prius that hums.