Toyota Explains, Demonstrates Noisemaker coming standard in all 2012 Prius models

Plus, a lot of people become absorbed by what they're listening to and don't pay as much attention to their surroundings.

The blind can actually hear better than sighted people, and certainly way better than those "deaf, dumb and blind" legislators...

I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents...

In addition to our '07 Prius, we have a '11 Leaf. The Leaf comes with a noisemaker built in (presumably Nissan was expecting this) that has a switch to turn it off. However, since the final law prohibits the ability to disable it, I imagine that for hybrids and EVs 2012 onward will not have the flexibility of the '11 Leaf. Pretty lame if you ask me.

I don't know if there are any other Leaf owners who have weighed in but the Leaf has two different noisemakers. One makes a "beep beep" noise when backing up, much like the Prius, only outside instead of inside. The other is actually surprisingly unobtrusive. It basically sounds like a whistle, or a lower pitch version of the high pitch whine the electric motor makes. The noise cuts out at about 19 MPH. Basically parking lot speed.

Now I personally find it pointless since I can hear that high pitch whine and I imagine that most blind folks could too. I know not everyone can, but if the old adage that your other senses compensate for your one sense that is disabled is true, then it's not unrealistic to assume their ears are more sensitive than the average person and can hear such things. I'm no expert, but if its true that their have been no cases of hybrid/EV vs blind person collisions, that would seem to support the above. Or at the least, show that blind folks have developed some sort of way to make sure the road is safe for crossing.

As for people who are not blind, I think they should start looking both ways before crossing instead of stepping out into traffic expecting the whole world to stop and worship the ground they walk on. I've seen plenty of that going on long before I ever got a hybrid or an EV. Those types are probably partly responsible for that law (and politicians definitely fit into that category, hence their ire) but are using hybrids and EVs as scapegoats for their own idiocy and ineptness. It's also a useful weapon for hybrid and EV haters. Not that I'm being accusatory or anything!

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox now!

PS - Is there a soapbox emoticon?

I guess I have to get on PriusChat more often. The VPNS is one of the most ridiculous features I have heard of in sometime. At first blush, one would think it was a joke.
It make about as much sense as a SPWS (Satellite Proximity Warning System), which would alert you to a falling satellite from earth orbit.

One of the options I added is a SWC (Stealth Warning Chime). When going thru parking lots in stealth mode, I can gently alert people to my presence. That's all you need; just a little ding-dong.

My wife and I test drove a 2012 Toyota Prius HB Trim 2 today, expecting to hear the new "vehicle notification proximity location" system. But, as we pulled away from the dealership, no noise.

Any idea why? The salesman was pretty clueless, never having heard about this new system. No help there. Possibility the system was disconnected?

Curious

It is too quiet to hear from the cabin unless in an "echo-y" area like a garage or alleyway. It is the perfect failure in design so that the only time you can hear it it is useless.

you are not supposed to hear it from the cabin, but only in front of the vehicle, it is very directional.

Well, to be honest... Spend some time at one of the Universities, in my case, I spent 7 months at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They have a few of the pure electric vehicles, and I rode with one person who drove it. When you have to drive where there is a lot of pedestrian traffic, the electric carts run into the biggest problem of people just simply not paying attention. Most people are used to hearing motors rumbling, even the more quiet motor engines, they still make a distinctive sound. The electric motors bare make enough of a noisy and unless you are listening for a bit more rattling, where you have bikes and many other people walking, the sound of an electric cart is barely noticeable, especially with cars driving by as well.

Unless it is floating, it is making road noise. Should all bicyclists also wear chirping devices? They are even quieter because they are lighter. What about all pedestrians? Strap a chirper on them, you don't want to run them over.

You can hear bikes, cars, people, animals, whatever approaching if you are paying attention with nothing more than your ears. If you are walking down a road, assume a car is going to be on it. If you are walking on the sidewalk, assume there won't be a car. If you are blind then you should be paying attention even more so to the sounds. A moving EV will make noise just like a moving ICE vehicle. A stopped EV won't. But the same person who accelerates like a bat out of hell just to hit the blind person crossing the street too slowly, would probably also run them over in an ICE vehicle.

February 2012 Okay, so these noisemakers have been installed on all new Priuses for a while now, right? I have seen a lot of brand new Prius over the past month or two. I have yet to hear the new noisemaker. It must sound extremely close to just the whirr of the electric generator. Has anyone distinctively heard the noise?

to fit in with the crowd, you have to:

1. complain that it is stupid and decide you will never ever buy 2012, together with petitioning your representative in congress.
2. when you encounter it on road and not hear the noise, start complaining that you dont hear it and hence it is stupidest thing ever and that it is broken.





p.s. it only works when gas engine is off.

I could not have said it better myself!

With one exception.. "animals.". Believe me, if a wild animal doesn't want a blind person to hear it, the blind person will not hear it. Have you ever seen a cat hunt? How about a mountain lion? Same goes for prey trying to evade detection.

But this thread is not about wild animals. I just felt compelled to add that. Okay, back on topic.

Lol, agreed. But I mean animals that are likely to be heard by blind or not blind people alike. A dog walking on a leash or something like that.

And I live on the front range of the rocky mountains. Bears, mountain lions, bobcats, cougars, wolves (recently), coyotes, and lots of others are around me all the time. Sometimes when I wake up there is a mountain lion curled up by one of my trees. And on the other side of the house is usually a herd of deer and a few foxes. Apparently at night time they just call a truce and sleep...

Through friends of friends I heard of some hunters that get out to the field early enough to find the turkeys sleeping. These are respectable hunters and leave the birds be, and wait to hunt until they are up.

They have yet to bag a turkey.

Now imagine this.. you are sleeping soundly at 3:30am, when your neighbor in his Prius in EV mode trys to quietly creep down the road to get home, when the noisemaker comes on, wakes up all the animals, and there's a ruckus of noise everywhere - complete chaos! - and before you know it you are wide awake with no chance of getting back to sleep!

Well yes, and we all have them. For most of us its our mouths, but on rides some people have bells, others horns, or speakers and mp3 players.

Hybrids and plug ins have horns. IMHO if the driver uses it properly that should be fine. It is a PITA sometimes yelling for people to get out of the way, maybe a secondary less noisy horn would be nice, but I hate government mandating this noisemaking device.

I have a Prius 2012 Plug-In. I didn't know it made that noise until I drove into the garage one day with the windows down and radio off. That's the only time sound echoes off the walls into the car and I can actually hear that sound.

If I'm in the car with the windows up I can't hear it even if I have the radio off. The natural sound of the electric engine is only only thing I hear. If I have windows down I still can only hear it when next to a wall.

I stood outside and had someone else drive the car, I could hear it easily then. It's not obnoxious, but it's definitely louder than most gas powered cars, but only from the outside.

The noise requirement is silly but it's not Toyota's place to disobey the law that we set for them. The law is made by the U.S. Government, and the government is run by the people, so we are responsible for this noise the car makes. Toyota did a good job of putting the noise in a such a way it becomes imperceptible from the inside.

It doesn't bother me much, but I like driving with as little noise as possible. That's one of the reasons why I got this car, so I might try to dig in there and find out where the sound is actually coming from and disconnect it.

Violating a federal law in the process, probably . May even be in the Affordable Care Act somewhere.

it's not hard to find, front right lower corner. there are threads here on the how-to, it's pretty simple.

The sound only emits when going slower than 15 mph. That's not really driving speed. It's moving through a parking lot. Why tamper with that?

On suburbs streets, there's nothing coming from the propulsion system. Silent.