Sweepi
4 hours 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
4 hours 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
4 hours 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
4 hours 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.
piva00
3 hours ago
Not at 30-50km/h, the noise from engines revving from traffic lights overpower the constant tyre rolling noise.
noir_lord
4 hours 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.
FatherOfCurses
3 hours ago
I don't have a link but I recall that someone did a study that revealed that there was no safety improvement from loud exhaust and the only way to improve motorcycle safety was increasing visibility with high-visibility vests.
In my state there are no helmet laws so I always find it amusing that the "loud pipes save lives" crew are the same who wear no helmets or any other protective gear.
noir_lord
3 hours ago
> In my state there are no helmet laws.
I still find that one wild.
When I commuted I wore full high viz motorcycle specific textiles (jacket/trousers), proper boots and a helmet with the highest safety rating (on the SHARP system), as with everything in life you can mitigate the risk (in the case of a motorcyle by riding sensibly and appropriate equipment), you can't remove it and riding a motorcycle is inherently more risky compared to other forms of commuting not least because you are sharing the road with much bigger/much heavier vehicles and you are rare enough that a lot of drivers just don't consider Motorcyles - hell one of our road safety campaigns literally had the slogan "Think! Bike".
Never had an off (riding on the road, many times offroad but that's different), had two near misses - one was sand/crap on the road and the front end started to go and the other was a lady pulling straight out into the road from a blind exit (literally a hole in the wall completely blocking her view), I'd gone past that many times on the way home from work and I always slowed down because I'd flagged it as a "yeah, that's just dangerous" so I had time to stop just, she was very apologetic but that wouldn't have helped me much after I'd ploughed into and over her car.
I enjoyed riding motorcycles but they were always fundamentally a tool to me to get from A to B, my friends who ride strictly for pleasure and much less safely have way more crashes (in one case one of them wrote off two bikes in six weeks...).
I disagree with the way they ride and didn't ride with them even when I had a bike, there are literally track days for that stuff, keep it off the public highway where you risk hurting other people for your "fun".
vidarh
3 hours ago
I don't think you even need to outlaw them. Just add aggressively progressive taxes on externalities, like Norway does (not for noise, but CO2 and NoX emissions as well as curbe weight; adding noise as well shouldn't might be an idea).
Of course you can regulate thresholds that can not be exceeded as well, but generally I think we should tax externalities more rather than outlaw things whenever possible, and do it much more often. Amp those taxes until the perceived problem goes away, whether because sufficient numbers of people won't pay them or because they're high enough to mitigate the negative effects.
When it comes to supercars, I suspect most of them will end up not being on the road much as the proportion of EV cars gets to a point where it starts to reduce the density of places to fill the tank anyway so to the extent they're a problem it will increasingly limit itself and so it's not really worth wasting time on.
dzhiurgis
2 hours ago
Them paying to pollute doesn’t solve my problem at all.
mimischi
4 hours ago
This but for motorbikes. I can’t stand people riding them through residential areas in London late at night, revving their engines.
turtlebits
3 hours ago
Supercars aren't the excessively noisy ones. Those are the modified cars. Many have quiet modes that run off battery so you don't wake up your neighbors.
IMHO, pollution is way worse.
I'd rather a tax on gas so high that commuter ICE cars don't exist anymore. Let the enthusiasts who actually enjoy driving burn gas.
4d4m
3 hours ago
Tell us what appliance you drive that makes you an expert on future supercars
estearum
3 hours ago
What? They're commentating on policy more than anything lol.
dzhiurgis
2 hours ago
Pollution too. Puffing smog into your kids face is insane. Especially bad in places where old diesel cars got absorbed.
cindyllm
4 hours ago
[dead]
4rffs
4 hours ago
[flagged]