"Stealth" Mode?

Well, my dog thinks the car is quieter.

I live on a hill. Not at the tippy top, just over the top. So when I come home from work I coast the last block to the house and down the driveway. For many years I thought my dog recognized my car, but it seems that she actually recognizes the sound of my car.

When I come over the top of the hill in stealth and park without any more noise than rolling over the odd leaf in the driveway, she has no clue I'm home. I'm usually traveling at about 20 MPH on the street and only 10 in the driveway. It's damn quiet. Especially if you don't use the AC.

I now know for sure that my dog sleeps on the bed when I'm not home. I don't even wake her.

 

I drive down my neighbourhood in stealth as well. My dogs do recognize the car, as I can watch them perk up and run to the opposite side of the yard when they see me rolling up to the house.

 

Sounds about right. The only vehicles where I hear the engine over the tires, are the ones that have had aftermarket exahust systems installed.

 

The main ingredients of vehicular noise is the tires, the aerodynamic turbulence, and the ICE's air intake. The last is a contributing factor when you see an air inlet tract tract that is contorted more than you would think necessary. Still, above 30 MPH or so, tires become the biggest factor.

 

Sorry, I don't want to give up my "stealth" mode at 55 mph. That's one of my favorite things about the car. Hey, when you're in your 50s (age, not mpg), you take your thrills where you find them! :wink: Besides, what do you propose we call it?

 

Up here in the (as the Republican National Committee calls it) "Soviet of Washington", us Tree Huggers will NEVER, NEVER relinquish our hard-fought (and bought) right to use Stealth At Any Speed.

Any attempts to rob us of this right will have us manning barricades at the Jimmy Hendrix Experience Museum. Red Banners will be festooned from the top of the Space Needle by base jumpers.

And we'll jam daffodils in the wire reels of the stun guns...

Nah, let's keep Stealth as an all-encompassing idiom, sort of like, in New Jersey, where they say, "Fuggeddaboudit".


Bob

 

I know that I have read that, but the Energy Monitor shows that the ICE is shut off and only the battery is powering the car giving me 99.9 mpg for that stretch.

 

John1701a.com has a great flash presentation for the planetary gear system which shows the motion of each gear and the system in various modes of operation. For me, a moving picture's worth a thousand words, and it helped explain what I feel/hear.

As for the dog opinion, my two horse-size monsters are behind a fence during the day and were used to howling up a storm when Dad came home from work. They could definitely pick out the engine sound over the neighbor's cars or passers-by. Now as I slink through the neighborhood and roll into the driveway, they're clueless. When I've bought a new car before, they were usually able to adapt and learn the new 'sound' in about a week. This time they're really confused!

 

Not to be confused with EV mode, which is enabled via the factory-installed switch not available in the US. Not sure 'electric mode' and 'EV mode' are distinct enough...