Ferrari will NEVER make an electric car - Chairman Luca di Montezemolo

random thought... i don't see why people love the sound so much.. it does sound good but it's a giant beacon for cops that are miles away. they can listen for you and do.

with an EV they could drive how they want where they want and nobody will have a clue you're going as fast as you are till they clock you, or see you passing cars.

 

i didn't read the follow ups... i see daniel's post is basically the same as mine. i was even going to add a bit about harleys...

 

Heck - I've even enjoyed the highly toxic afterbirth-unburned fuel stench at the drag strip - besides loving the much less enjoyable noise stench. That's simply marketing, if you're honest. It's the same neanderthal psychology that makes us want to hear loud drums ... loud sterios ... etc. But like the post above says - when you're in bed - wanting to sleap, just let someone fill your bedroom with the stench of burned fuel and the stench of 150db of noise ... unless you love it THEN ... well you really love it no more then the lust that heroin brings to its users. It's just a thing that will ultimately destroy parts of you ... enjoyable as it may be at the time.

 

I think that some people just like to shout "LOOK AT ME!!!" and a loud car is one way to do that. I prefer not to disturb people, and a quiet car fits the bill.

 

There's always been a raucous battle over loud(er) pipes in the motorcycle community, and like most....I detest overly loud pipes, and we do have our ambassadors, just like the Prius community.
However (comma!) I can tell you with hard-won authority that loud pipes on motorcycles save lives. My Harley is orders of magnitude more noticeable on public roads than my Kawi, with its unmodified sewing machine pipes.
I can't tell you how many times some distracted driver has almost punched my ticket on the Kawi.
OK....so where do my rights stop and where do yours start?
Good Questions.
Some states...most of them actually, have laws regulating pipes. The slickest amongst them have rolling inspection stations. You stop, run your RPMs to a certain range (4,000 IIRC) and they measure the sound at a certain distance. You fail....you get ticketed.
No problem.
I can and do live within those limits, although my Harley is right on the line. I've found that even with a much louder than stock exhaust, motorcyclists can live and ride without creating a nuisance of themselves. We call it throttle dicipline, and I can tell you that idiot trucks with their flowmaster exhausts (if they bother with exhaust systems, that is!) are a much more common source of noise pollution in this part of the country. YMMV.
It's the same with music, art, and other things. It's all subjective. The reason that there have to be agreed upon standards is that my definition of "too loud" is going to be different than somebody else's, actually almost everybody else's...BUT we all have to live together.

Quick sea story:
I was sitting at a crowded city intersection on my Harley, when some primered-out Honda rolls up with ear-bleeding, window rattling music pulsing out of his car. I flipped up my helmet, grin at him, and run my RPM up to about 8,000 (Unlike most HD's my V-Rod redlines at 9.4) VERY EFFECTIVELY drowning out his "music". He limped away....making an illegal right turn on red.
No less than 4 people got out of their cars and applauded me!

Electric Motorcycles?
Maybe, someday.

Not now, thanks anyway!

 

now that's a sad "look at me" story. Wow, we really are screwed as a species. evolution cannot happen fast enough...

 

I usually have classical music on my car stereo. People with overly-loud "music"* in their cars and the windows open are another example of infantile "look-at-me" syndrome.

* I never hear actual music from those cars. It's always some cacophonous thumping noise without any musical quality whatsoever. It's just noise to force people to look at them. If there's anything more infantile and pathetic than Hummer drivers, it's people who crank up their car stereos to the point where it causes ear pain 50 feet away.

 

Baaaah !!
If Orange County Choppers can go electric - then folks with WAY less tat's ought to as well


.

 

Hey! That guy's riding Tony's bike!

 

When he says "never", either he's being dramatic or stupid, but certainly not prescient. With the changes in technology it is foolery to state unequivocally it will never happen.