CompleteCar

Audi heads to the sound studio to build electric R8

Audi reveals how its new electric supercar will sound.

One of the main complaints about electric cars, other than range anxiety, is that their near silent running can be hazardous to pedestrians who are used to gauging whether a car is close-by by listening for engine noise.

The problem may not be so bad for EVs designed for purely urban settings due to the lower speeds they achieve, but when you are building a supercar EV some sort of noise capable of alerting pedestrians to the presence of the car needs to be factored in.

Since announcing that it would build an R8 e-tron Audi sound engineers have been busy working on a suitable noise to go with the car. It needs to sound sporty but also encapsulate the electronic nature of the drivetrain. The end result, which you can hear in the handily provided video, sounds like something out of a science fiction movie and suits the nature of the R8 e-tron perfectly we reckon.

Click here to see the video

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Published on April 13, 2012