Written on 27.08.2014
The Internal Combustion engine is a thing close to my heart. It really is. I absolutely love the way each one, even if developed to be mass produced, develops it's own sound over time. It acquires personality, according to how it's owner treats it. It is a beautiful thing. Some of them sing soprano, some sing bass. A person can make an educated guess regarding the past life of an internal combustion just by listening to it. It is a beautiful thing.
However there are several threats to the existence of the internal combustion engine that could take it off the streets and into the museums. Fossil fuels are running out. The internal combustion engine is also in all of the environmentalists' bad books because of the fact that it releases harmful gases including methane and carbon dioxide. I should mention here that we (humans) also release carbon dioxide and cows also release LARGE amounts of methane. I'm not going to say how. I'm quite sure you can get to the bottom of that by yourself. Since I can be rather immature, I laughed for hours when I found out how.
Anyway, the only plausible alternatives that currently exist to the internal combustion engine are the hydrogen fuel cell and the very harbinger of doom (and silence), the electric motor. The electric motor is extremely clever. There are advantages to it including the fact that all torque can be applied the second the accelerator pedal is pushed. This is a property that the IC engine does not possess.
The reason I don't particularly like the electric motor is because it is almost completely silent. The hydrogen fuel cell suffers from the same problem. All anybody can hear when driving a well manufactured electric car is a hum. A quiet, steady, unchanging hum. Even the ridiculously powerful (electric) Mercedes-Benz SLS moves at 155 miles an hour with only a hum to show for it. Make no mistake. That car is a thing of beauty and proves that the super car is not dead (which was a situation I genuinely feared) and never will be. However, when people see the world flying past them at 150 mph they want a roar or a wail or something to that effect (I certainly do) from the exhaust that's in keeping with the experience. A hum just won't do it. Imagine the straight on Circuit De La Sarthe 50 years into the future during the Le Mans with beautiful, intelligently designed, colourful cars flying down it at 200 mph; SILENTLY. It would be positively unnerving.
Perhaps they'll develop some sort of sound that emulates the IC engine that is played through speakers while the cars are moving. I suppose people would get used to it eventually. Although, it just wouldn't be the same.
Written on 05.04.2017
As you may imagine, as the years have passed, so have my thoughts on the electric engine and how it will inevitably replace it's older, more traditional counterpart. I now believe that this process, however painful for those of us who've grown up listening to the screaming singing engines of WRC and F1, will be... good for us. Good for all of us.
"What spurred this radical shift of ideology?" You ask, bewildered? "Sit down. I shall explain it to you." Say I. To begin with, I now live next to a junction at which two (very busy) roads meet, in one of the more dynamic parts of my city, Bangalore. I therefore consequently believe, that sound pollution exists. It does. Believe me. If you live in a cottage somewhere in the countryside, you have no say in this particular matter. You may only listen. Anyways, I was explaining, how on many evenings I pull my curtains aside, at around 8 PM and wonder how much quieter it would be without the sound of several engines constantly fluctuating somewhere between 0 and 2000 RPM a few feet above the road I'm looking at. I have gotten used to hearing the occasional especially loud engine and the constant muffled 'Horn OK Please' toots (during rush hour), but I'm sure that I would more readily be accustomed to the luxury of silence. The sound I hear very clearly if I open my window at rush hour is not of a few cars passing by, singing at 5000 RPM. That would be enjoyable. It is, of several tens of cars, idling and honking impatiently at one another. Perhaps I'll even upload a sound clip of it soon. I shall stop talking about this, because if I don't, one of my classmates will inevitably tell me that I remind them of their perpetually discontent uncle.
Let us imagine the aforementioned scenario with one of it's central variables, changed, in a binary manner. What would it be like to live here, if only electric vehicles came to and went from the junction outside? A fascinating thought. It would definitely be a good bit quieter. No more on that. We wouldn't want to be accused of "being old". Also, the disconcerting amount of smoke that blows out of the occasional, badly maintained, rather elderly SUV would no longer be an issue as the men that frequently cause it, would then be impatiently peering over the steering wheels of their eco cars. Ah. That particularly satisfies me for some reason. Overall, things would be less dramatic, frenzied and more quiet and reasoned. Wait. No it wouldn't. This is after all, beloved India where we will always to find a way to "keep things interesting".
Onwards. Let us briefly discuss the disadvantages of such a situation. Well, time has passed, and I simply can't think of one. The only one that came to mind was the romantic purr of the internal combustion we would be deprived of but then I remembered that one of the startups around here would probably circumvent that loss somehow with some sort of artificial internal engine sound idea. Disingenuous? Yes, probably. Necessary? Most definitely.
Micah Vidyasagar
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