You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Electric cars that kill.
It sounds like a Quentin Tarrantino peyote trip.
Aren’t electric cars environmentally friendly? Don’t they make tree huggers happy? Don’t they reduce green house gasses and get Democratic chicks hot?
I’d say yes, yes and yes.
But here’s the rub. Electric cars are silent, but deadly. Kind of like covert flatulence.
Nissan says quiet is an automotive selling point, but not everyone sees it this way.
According to many visually impaired citizens, electric cars can be dangerous and they are speaking out – ready to burn this “motha” down.
Well maybe they are not agitated enough to get combustible, but they are speaking out in hushed tones.
According to ABC News: Blind people take issue with electric cars because electric cars are silent and silence to a blind person means the car is invisible.
Think about it. A Corvette roars like a sexy 8 cylinder monster. A 370Z purrs like a jungle cat howling at the moon.
What I’m saying is engine roar is part of the automotive attraction.
You hear a Camaro Z 28 coming from four blocks away. Blind people, whose hearing is even more acute, can hear that car from 8 blocks away.
But nobody can hear a Nissan Leaf. It roars with the intensity of a Macbook Pro.
That’s right. It’s a computer with wheels. It has all the audible horsepower of a cupcake. A blind person can’t hear the Nissan Leaf any more than they can hear a night light, and that’s dangerous when you are trying to cross a city street.
To deal with blind people’s concerns, companies like Nissan have asked a Hollywood sound engineer to give the silent electric car a sound. It’s artificial, but it’s a sound.
Maybe it’s a whizzing sound like a Jetsons space craft or maybe its a buzz like a battery discharging energy. Whatever it is, the idea is to make the Leaf noisier than a leaf.
It sounds crazy, but in a world where less is more, where more is more, where greener is better and retro is macho, silence apparently has the potential to kill.
So put a sound car in the Leaf Nissan. Give it a little “VROOM VROOM” Not only for the blind people, but for the automotive enthusiast who wants to hear the ponies under the hood, even if they are all corralled in a 12 volt battery.
And that is crazy.™