Toyota Prius

The U.S. Department of Transportation is proposing new rules that would require hybrid and electric vehicles to add artificial sounds. This proposal is designed to make these very quiet vehicles easier to detect by pedestrians, especially the visually impaired. DoT has proposed a dozen acceptable sounds here, but they are all pretty boring.

NPR’s “All Things Considered” crowdsourced its audience and came away with a number of better and more humorous examples. The favorite one came from the TV series “The Jetson”. The iconic sound of their flying car is found above.

Me, My Bicycle and My Shadow

The NPR article goes on to enumerate a number of their other candidate sounds. Including the sound of cards in the spokes of a bicycle wheel. It can be found below.

The article then goes on to suggest that what your silent electric car really needs is its own theme song. They even have a suggestion or two. The following YouTube video has Kermit the frog singing, “It’s not easy being green”.