Electric cars can be very quiet considering the fact that they don’t have a conventional internal combustion engine. The cars are powered by electric motors and batteries which is why they are whisper-quiet. That’s going to change starting September 2019. To ensure that pedestrians are aware of an electric car driving up, all electric cars will be required by law to make a noise.
Those who purchase an electric car after September 1, 2019 will find that their car automatically makes noise when it’s traveling at speeds less than 18.6 miles per hour.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has completed its Quiet Car rule which has been designed to ensure that pedestrians don’t get hurt by these whisper-quiet cars. It took a long time for this rule to be passed. Congress first passed the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act back in 2010 which gave the NHTSA until January 2014 to finalize the rule. It kept pushing back the date and has finally followed through.
This now gives car manufacturers three years to put systems in their cars that automatically make a noise when the car is traveling below the aforementioned speed. Some manufacturers like Kia and Nissan already have similar systems in their cars and now we’ll see this being implemented across the board by the electric car industry.
Filed in . Read more about Electric Cars. Source: nhtsa.gov