Hi guys,
My company assembles electric motorcycles and mopeds. We are considering launching our own electric motorcycle line up and I noticed EV's are very silent despite the reduced noise levels this is impacting pedestrians on busy streets especially in India where majority of people don't use the footpath to walk and the traffic is outrageous in most cities. I was wondering how I could make the motor louder or just loud enough for pedestrians to know or notice the vehicle coming to them. I personally like the sound of any electric motor over an internal combusting engine as they sound futuristic in a peculiar way.
We currently are using 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 Kw electric brushless hub motors and the top speed of our bikes are limited to 50 Kmph for mopeds and 80 kmph for motorcycles with three different modes that act as gears. The motor hub is installed on the rear wheel and its powered using 60 V or 72 V lithium iron phosphate batteries that depends on the customer's preference. The ampere of the batteries varies from customer to customer as well. We are allowing customers to choose the mileage/range. The highest Amp battery we used was 60v 72 amps to give a customer 180-210 Km range. I noticed that the higher the capacity of a motor the more sound it is likely to produce however most of our customers prefer the 1 Kw or 2 Kw motor and the noise produced by the motor is minimal and hardly audible.
At first I thought of using microphones and an amplifier to increase the noise of the engine after thinking about it a lot I felt this idea was not the best one to approach as the sound of the engine is likely to be altered or the microphone might pick up other sounds from the surroundings or even get wet. I don't have any electrical engineering or a foundational physics background and I'm finding it difficult to find a solution. Please share your thoughts and Ideas about it and kindly be elaborative as it might help me understand your solution to the problem better.
Thank you Guys.
My company assembles electric motorcycles and mopeds. We are considering launching our own electric motorcycle line up and I noticed EV's are very silent despite the reduced noise levels this is impacting pedestrians on busy streets especially in India where majority of people don't use the footpath to walk and the traffic is outrageous in most cities. I was wondering how I could make the motor louder or just loud enough for pedestrians to know or notice the vehicle coming to them. I personally like the sound of any electric motor over an internal combusting engine as they sound futuristic in a peculiar way.
We currently are using 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 Kw electric brushless hub motors and the top speed of our bikes are limited to 50 Kmph for mopeds and 80 kmph for motorcycles with three different modes that act as gears. The motor hub is installed on the rear wheel and its powered using 60 V or 72 V lithium iron phosphate batteries that depends on the customer's preference. The ampere of the batteries varies from customer to customer as well. We are allowing customers to choose the mileage/range. The highest Amp battery we used was 60v 72 amps to give a customer 180-210 Km range. I noticed that the higher the capacity of a motor the more sound it is likely to produce however most of our customers prefer the 1 Kw or 2 Kw motor and the noise produced by the motor is minimal and hardly audible.
At first I thought of using microphones and an amplifier to increase the noise of the engine after thinking about it a lot I felt this idea was not the best one to approach as the sound of the engine is likely to be altered or the microphone might pick up other sounds from the surroundings or even get wet. I don't have any electrical engineering or a foundational physics background and I'm finding it difficult to find a solution. Please share your thoughts and Ideas about it and kindly be elaborative as it might help me understand your solution to the problem better.
Thank you Guys.