As they said in Community, one of my favorite TV series, “we live in the darkest timeline of the multiverse”. A timeline in which internal combustion’s days are numbered, and the solution of the “usual” car exhaust manufacturers is to install huge speakers under an electric car to simulate that they carry a gigantic V8 engine in their guts. It is not a dystopia of the future, it is the present: Borla has just presented the Active Performance Sound system for electric cars at the SEMA Show. That’s how it works… and that’s how it sounds.
We start from the basis that I do not like that certain combustion cars simulate the sound of the engine through the sound system. And with this in mind, we move on to the next stage of the “simulation”: channeling a supposed exhaust sound to the outside. How does Borla Exhausts get this? They connect a loudspeaker to the car’s control unit, and modulate speaker sound depending on throttle load, the speed, or the acceleration that we are demanding from the vehicle. In addition, we can customize the sound in question to unsuspected limits.
The technology has a lot of room for improvement. It still sounds artificial, but in the future it could fool many petrolheads.
Not only can we choose the type of vehicle to replicate, but we can also vary the frequency, echo and oscillation of the sound, as well as touch all the possible tones – and everything, from a smartphone app. I have to admit that the final sound can even deceive us in some other circumstance. If you want to listen to it, take a look at the videos that we have included on these lines. Whether we like it or not, it is possible that this is the future that we live in, so we will have to get used to it.
