The New Hyundai Ioniq 5 Shows The Uncanny Valley Fake Engine Sounds Work If Done Right

With the Ionic 5 N, Hyundai has followed efforts by others like BMW with their I8 to create both fake engine sounds for this electric car and artificial shifting, and the sound is pretty good. They aren’t the only ones. Stellantis, under their Dodge brand, has also created a car that I admit is growing on me, which is also electric. Initially, people complained its engine sound seemed off (it sure looked powerful coming out of the fog, though). It does seem to be getting better though.

On the graphics side of the computer industry, we have a concept we call the Uncanny Valley, where graphics reach a point where people almost look realistic but are just too off to make viewers uncomfortable. I think we see the same concept with these artificial car sounds if they aren’t accurate enough; they sound off to our ears, and it likely would be better to either not have them or do what the original Fisker Karma did and allow fun sounds (like the sound of the Jetson’s flying car) here is the BMW i3 with that same sound, it’s fun, but it isn’t as annoying as V8 that sounds like it has some kind of disease.

The Problem With Almost Good Enough

We have, and will be getting, ever more advanced sound systems and AIs in coming cars, and right now, we can create highly accurate fake engine sounds. But doing so costs money, and the finance folks, who we fondly call “Bean Counters,” often step in and cut our product budgets to meet pricing goals, not realizing that if they cut too much, it will kill interest in the car.

We’ve seen amazing prototype cars only to be disappointed when the cars finally show up and look like crap. For instance, the Plymouth Prowler looked incredible outside. Still, it had a gutless engine, cheap plastic interior, and an automatic transmission, which turned what could have been a car most of us would have loved to have into a car that no one seemed to want.

I often think that making these types of decisions would be a good use of AI simulation, as you could build a pool of AI avatars based on car buyers in a given segment, then run designs past them as they are cost reduced and stop just before these potential buyers stop being potential buyers, and, unlike what we now do with car focus groups, you could also compare the results against rendered concepts of what the cars the new car would compete with would look like and get a far better idea if you have a star or a turd.  

This is not just about how the car looks, feels, and drives, but how it sounds all of this can be emulated and you can get feedback from real performance car drivers about the result and use that feedback to inform your decisions further reducing the probability of having a failure.

As we found with Uncanny Valley people, I think with sound, it is better not to try to emulate something until you can do it very well. My electric car, the Audi E-Tron GT, has a fake motor sound, but it doesn’t at all sound like a gas engine. It is a unique sound that you can turn off if you like but still gives you a feel that something is happening mainly when you are the higher performance Dynamic mode. My old electric Jaguar I-Pace had something similar that I liked a bit better because when you put that car in dynamic mode, not only did the sound get louder and not sound like a gas motor, but the driver’s binnacle changed to a kind of combat mode which was just fun, and I miss that on the Audi. 

Wrapping Up:

I think, as Hyundai has demonstrated with their Ioniq 5 N, that good enough fake engine sounds are a good idea for people, which is most of us, who started out with gas cars and like the sounds associated with driving the hot cars we’ve owned. But you can’t cut corners with this sound; it has to be identical to the real thing enough, so you are left in the Uncanny Sound Valley, where the sound is just annoying or worse.

When I was in marketing, I’d often say, “Impressions are 100% of reality,” meaning it doesn’t really matter what something is; it matters what people believe it is. With fake engine sounds, your goal is to make people believe an electric car has a hot gas engine (though, personally, I’d still like my car to sound like either a Jet or the Jetsons' flying car for fun). Doing this well pays off; doing it cheaply, not so much.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst covering automotive technology and battery developments at Torque News. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia, and follow his articles on Forbes, on X, and LinkedIn.