I'm a new owner of Clarity and have been driving my car for over a week and love it. I notice that there is a noise when accelerate or decelerate the car. It sounds like an ambulance in a distance. It is not very loud but definitely noticeable. At the beginning, I was confused why there was always an emergency vehicle when I exit the highway. I thought it was the Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System, but the sound appears at higher speeds than 12 mph, I don't know exactly at what speed it start to appear though. I also noticed that I can't hear it when the windows is open. Not sure whether it is because of the louder road noise. Could it be the wind noise or engine noise? Has anyone noticed the same noise? Is it just the AVAS at higher speeds? Thank you.
Are you referring to this thread: https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/my-car-sings-to-me.2832/
I believe the pedestrian warning cuts off at 18 mph. But what I hear is the sound of the electric motor which I really like. Just today I was thinking if future electric cars lost the motor sound I'd be sorry.
Here is a link to the sound of a Leaf electric motor. Note the volume is louder then what is probably normal. But it should give you an idea as what an electric vehicle motor should sound like when accelerating and decelerating.
Well that's the right sound but I hope it would be much quieter like the Clarity. You did say this recording was louder than normal.
The sound reminds me of the Montreal Metro. Electric subway cars on rubber wheels. It's kind of neat.
Except for the low whine at 28-34 mph, my Clarity is dead silent with no electric motor noise at all. Guess I got one of the quiet ones.
On the topic of noises, a lot of Clarities ship with wind noise problems at cruising speeds or above. There’s a thread on here about it. I’ve been trying to get Honda to fix this problem on mine for a while now. Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs
The noise I heard is the same with the one from leaf in the video posted by Marshall. It is at a much lower level though. I guess it is the electric motor noise. I’m curious to know Why some clarities have this noise and others don’t as Kentuckyken mentioned. Anyone know whether Tesla cars also have this noise?
1. Some of us have hearing loss. 2. Some know what an electric motor sounds like as it ramps up and down and can ignore it. 3. Some have other noise sources masking the sound, like music. As a pedestrian, the loudest electrical motor powered vehicles that I've noticed where the city hybrid garbage trucks, hybrid city buses, and the Toyota hybrid Camry. The city hybrid garbage trucks take first prize for electrical motor noise due to the number of stops and goes they make. The National Drive Electric Week is next month. Maybe there will be few Teslas that you can check out. https://driveelectricweek.org/
