AUTONEWS

The solution to make baby's sleep in electric cars

One of the advantages often pointed out to electric vehicles is the silence on board - something that, however good the soundproofing of a combustion car, is impossible to experience in a conventional vehicle with a thermal engine, whether diesel or gasoline. It turns out that this apparent advantage of electric vehicles may not be the best ally of those parents who, already exhausted from trying to put the baby to sleep, decide to move on to the next stage: accommodate them in the car seat and take them for a walk. In a battery-only model, the trick that has been sleeping for generations for so long does not serve to pack the shoot.
Nissan, which has Leaf as one of the most popular trams on the market, realized this limitation and, more than that, the importance of remedying it. Supported by a study according to which most parents (65%), with children aged 2 years or less, sleep less than 5 hours a night, the Japanese brand decided to go to parents who admit to resorting to the old trick to go “take a walk” by car to put the child to sleep. According to the research cited, more than 60% say they apply this method and more than half (57%) do it at least once a week. However, in this research, Nissan also realized that most of the parents who try to put the baby to sleep in the car, think that this happens thanks to the movement of the vehicle when, in reality, it is the noise emitted by the operation of the combustion engine that tries to present João Pestana to the junior…
We are aware that the quiet operation of an EV may not be as effective as the operating noise of cars with an internal combustion engine, whose sound frequency - a combination of white, pink and brown noise with varying pitch - creates a kind of music particularly comforting for children, ”admits Paul Speed-Andrews, a Nissan specialist dedicated to noise and vibration.
Having identified this “fragility” of electric vehicles in comparison with “fossil” cars, Nissan tried to find a way to help parents “on” that miraculous little car ride. To this end, he turned to sound designer Tom Middleton, who is also an expert in the art of teaching the best techniques to ensure a peaceful sleep, and asked him for help in creating the first zero-emission lullaby. The result was this: 

But does it work? Tom Middleton explains that this song, "in addition to the frequencies of the combustion engines that only children hear and that helps them fall asleep", has the electric car itself as the featured artist. The “Nissan Dream Drive”, as this creation is called, results from “an orchestra of sounds and rhythms obtained from recordings made inside and outside the Leaf”.
Just play to start playing this wrapping album, and in the process, parents don't need to feel guilty about polluting the environment, stresses Nissan. This is because, according to the brand, driving a diesel or gasoline car to sleep the youngest is a trick that represents the emission of up to 70 kg of carbon dioxide annually. Something that does not happen in an electric vehicle, if we consider exclusively the CO2 emissions associated with travel.

Simone Carvalho, from Portugal/Mundoquatrodas