Silent killer: New audible warning for electric cars developed

The safety hazard posed by silent all-electric vehicles could be a thing of the past thanks to an all-new audible device that’s been funded by the European Union.

Called the eVADER, the new pedestrian warning system has been created to reduce the number of accidents in urban environments with pedestrians and cyclists who are being involved in more and more accidents because of the silent nature of electric and hybrid vehicles.

Developed in cooperation with car-makers like Nissan, Renault, Peugeot and Citroen, the eVADER works by using a camera built into the windscreen that specifically recognises pedestrians, cyclists and other road users.

When detected, six directional speakers target sound waves at the pedestrian detected, warning them of the approaching vehicle.

The noise, which sounds spookily like a special effect from a 1970s sci-fi movie, has been created after three years of development.

Deliberately created not to be a siren, which could annoy or alarm road users, the sound is said to not upset or irritate and is only five decibels quieter than the noise generated by a conventional petrol or diesel vehicle.

Since it’s funded by the European Union, the makers are already confident the eVADER will be adopted across the car industry.

Of course it helps when the new tech was funded by the European Union and will be ‘utilised to shape future EU legislation’, according to the makers.

Expect it, or a similar device, to be soon mandatory in all future vehicles sold in Europe, with a knock-on effect to the cars we drive.

In the past other car-makers, like Mercedes-Benz, have experimented using less obtrusive white noise on its production vehicles to warn pedestrians but, making a fraction of the noise this device makes, it was feared this would still be too quiet to make a difference and a more sophisticated ‘targeted’ device was needed.