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Comment by FpUser | Hacker News Reader

>"As electric cars have taught us, car tires are a major source of undesirable noise in a car’s cabin."

Cut the BS please. Tires are major source on cars with ICE. One does not need a Ph.D. or electric car to hear the noise.

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It's more that it's a lot easier to hear the tires with no combustion engine chugging away.

Not really. Go stand next to a highway sometime: the vast majority of the noise you're hearing is from tires, not engines. You'll notice the engine noise occasionally: it'll be from some moron who's modified their exhaust to be louder usually. With all the other cars, you're just hearing tire noise.

I figured the ratio was different inside the car. Which is what buyers care about.

You are correct. “Karl Fundkvist, a design engineer at Goodyear who specializes in acoustics.

At low speeds, the engine and exhaust system are the primary sources of noise, but at about 35 mph tire noise comes into play. At freeway speeds, the tires account for about 60% of the noise a typical car makes, Fundkvist said.”

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-may-12-hy-wheel...

They're not, you're not. As my comment (nor the sentence in question) was obviously not referring to the noise heard by others, but rather by people _in_ the car.

I'm talking about the internal experience, which is presumably what Honda is trying to optimise.

My last two cars have had acoustic/noise dampening to the point where one of them (Audi) even pumps engine noise into the cabin at a low level (and it's not a particularly quiet engine - twin turboed 2.9L V6).

there are acknowledging that tires are major sources. just in an EV you don't hear the engine, yet it's loud so you realize it is car tires all along

makes sense?

I realized long ago that when I travel in my Grand Caravan on cruise control at 100kph I mostly hear tires. Engine noise is not audible unless the engine goes high RPM when going up steep hill or whatever other reason

Could it be worse on heavier vehicles and/or the higher pressure tires they have?

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