19 comments

  • Sweepi an hour ago

    The future of supercars is to outlaw them to make any engine noise on the road. There is no reason to have engine noise other then that not having engine noise is not possible at a given price point. This is obviously not the case with "supercars".

    If you want to buy a toy that makes noise, get a non street-legal car for the race track. There is no reason why 99.9..% of the population should be required to tolerate more (street-)noise than necessary.

      piva00 an hour ago

      Engine noise from traffic is so normalised that it can be hard to picture how it can not exist.

      I only got the feeling of how much calmer it felt without engines revving all around after visiting Guilin, China a couple of years ago. Most cars, trucks, scooters were electric and the only noise I'd hear were tyres rolling, the odd ICE vehicle sounded like a banshee among the rest.

        redeeman 44 minutes ago

        most traffic noise is not the engine, its tires and other such noises. modern cars, including combustion ones, make very very little sound

        edit: for cars only, motorcycles etc make more

          bryanlarsen 31 minutes ago

          At highway speed, yes. But it's mostly cities where the complaints are. And at sane city speeds engine noise predominates.

          And at highway speed the exceptions like Harley's and glass-packs and high rpm super cars are the problem. It's not the steady whoosh of tire noise that wakes you up in the middle of the night.

          noir_lord 9 minutes ago

          > motorcycles etc make more

          Often by design (either the manufacturer or the rider swapping to a louder exhaust) there isn't any reason they can't be quieter and many of them are off the forecourt.

          The common argument you run into why people make them loud is its for "safety" but that's always felt like a thin excuse to justify "hey, look at me!" loud exhausts.

          Yes, I've owned motorcycles, I commuted using one to work for years, no it been "quiet" didn't make it any less safe.

          I do occasionally think about getting another one but the animus simply isn't there any more, I think if I needed transport these days I'd just get a car, for commuting a motorcycle was brilliant (it's legal in the UK to lane split which in heavy rush hour traffic is a real time saver) and they are cheaper to run but in every other way it was strictly worse than a car.

      mimischi 42 minutes ago

      This but for motorbikes. I can’t stand people riding them through residential areas in London late at night, revving their engines.

      4rffs 15 minutes ago

      Are you the same deluded guy that thinks Waymo etc is going to completely displace car ownership/individuals driving cars?

      lmao.

  • slices an hour ago

    It's obvious, now that we have fast, flashy, quiet cars, that part of the appeal of supercars has always been the sound of the engine.

      SpaceNugget an hour ago

      I think that's not obvious at all, and quite a personal preference. There's lots of assholes in the area with extremely loud cars who seem to think that way. I have never thought the sound of a engine is cool, pleasant, exciting, impressive, or anything remotely like that. I do like adrenaline and driving fast in almost every form of vehicle, but if I could have a silent maglev sportbike that drove just like a combustion based bike I would choose it in a heartbeat.

        toomuchtodo 42 minutes ago

        Schermer JA. A desire for a loud car with a modified muffler is predicted by being a man and higher scores on psychopathy and sadism. Curr Issues Personal Psychol. 2023 Apr 14;11(4):339-343. doi: https://doi.org/10.5114/CIPP/162006 PMID: 38075464; PMCID: PMC10699294.

        > Researchers noted that modifying a vehicle to make an illegal, disruptive noise at a distance demonstrates the callous disregard for other people's feelings that defines psychopathy.

        > Because the sudden noise startles and scares pedestrians or animals, the drivers frequently score high on everyday sadism, meaning they derive personal joy from minorly distressing or startling others.

        https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/human-individual-dif...

        > Contrary to my hypothesis, narcissism was not a significant predictor when the other personality dimensions were included. This finding suggests that people may not, in fact, be making their vehicles louder to draw attention to themselves or to say, “Look at me!”

        > The results are concerning in that they suggest that individuals who make their vehicles loud may be doing so to deliberately hurt others by disturbing them and that these individuals may be motivated by the negative state that they cause others. Although the study is a pilot study and requires replication, the results are perhaps especially concerning because some media outlets are reporting that the frequency of vehicles with loud exhaust systems has been increasing.

  • comrade1234 an hour ago

    It's like Swiss watches. Sure, a digital watch would be better but if you're really into mechanics and engineering a fancy hand-made swiss watch is your thing.

      yostrovs 13 minutes ago

      Imagine if the watch made a loud gurgling sound, that everyone can hear, every time you checked it.

  • feverzsj an hour ago

    Guess only rich people can afford carbon taxes in the future.

  • Peanuts99 an hour ago

    The difference being Swiss watches are elegantly engineered pieces of art whereas internal combustion engines of any kind are essentially just rube goldberg machines that we have collectively normalised as a society.

      tpaschalis 33 minutes ago

      I think you’re underselling the amount of sophistication and refinement that goes into a modern ICE, which is the backbone of a big part of the global economy.

      linksnapzz 4 minutes ago

      Reddit is --> thataway

      vivzkestrel 7 minutes ago

      you are underestimating what it takes to get a car to run at 450 kmph by a magnitude of 10x