Setting up an in-vehicle lab to test and refine EV sound design

As electrification is a major trend in the automotive industry today, cars have become a great canvas to design sounds that carry the brand image. However, design sounds for a moving vehicle represents a bigger challenge than most, and dedicated tools are needed to enable car manufacturers to experience the designed sounds in realistic conditions. This paper describes a project with a Chinese car manufacturer to set up a demonstration vehicle to facilitate the assessment of EV sound candidates. First, a scenarized journey and brand-related symbolism were defined to serve as a supporting material for the definition of meaningful demonstration sound designs in a cross-team effort (designers, NVH, production, audio system, etc.). This involved many diversified sound functions: ambiance sounds, HMI sounds, alarms, interior active sound design, AVAS, etc. Then, these designed sounds were evaluated in a listening test to narrow down sound candidates to be integrated in the demo car. Finally, the demo car was installed with a full 3D sound audio setup, and the selected sound designs were integrated, and assessed again. This allowed the car manufacturer to get valuable feedback that proved representative of the final context where they are perceived by users. Eventually, this project allowed the definition of 3 finely tuned sound presets corresponding to potential sound ambiances of differentiated driving modes to integrate in future series vehicles