Hyundai Wants To Make The Ioniq 5 N’s Fake Engine Sounds Even More Real

The N Active Sound+ feature in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is one of the greatest features of any current electric vehicle. The sound simulation does an amazing job of replicating the sound of a gas engine in an electric car. It also helps perfect the performance feel of the car. The crackles, burbles, and rev-sounds were clearly a work of passion from the designers of the Ioniq 5 N.

Now Hyundai wants to make it even better. A recent patent filing discovered by CarBuzz at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) shows how Hyundai can make the vehicle’s sounds even more authentic by closely correlating the sounds you hear to the actual powertrain behavior.

Sound Controller Uses Real Vehicle Inputs

The patent filing is titled “Method of controlling traveling sound of electric vehicle using motor vibration and virtual transmission signal.” Clearly, marketing and comms aren’t allowed anywhere near the engineering department when it comes to patents.

To keep it simple, the idea in this patent takes the actual vibrations from the electric motor and turns them into in-cabin sound.

Of course, in practice, it’s more complicated than that. It needs to be in order to make the sound, as the company says, “a marketable aspect of vehicles by enhancing the driver’s driving pleasure through hearing and vision.”

The vibration of the motor is captured as a signal and sent to a controller. Since the motor vibrates at a frequency that changes with power output and speed, the out-of-the-box sound is already much like that of a gas engine. At different frequencies, of course. The frequencies are much lower than a gas engine’s would be.

So Hyundai captures a few other inputs. Vehicle speed, accelerator pedal application, motor torque, drive mode, and some other data points are all captured. Each one is used to alter the motor vibration sound, and each one is given a different weighting based on driving conditions. If you’re using the vehicle’s manual mode, then the controller adds the virtual gear and calculated virtual engine speed to the equation.

In the controller, a Fourier transform is applied to pick out the main notes in the motor vibration sound. Those are then filtered and processed based on the other inputs.

Hyundai Wants Better Sound Inside And Out

The result, or at least the intended result, is a better electric vehicle sound. Not just for the driver of the vehicle, but for those around it. As the patent correctly points out, the noises used by EVs and hybrids typically suck. Ok, so it doesn’t quite use those words exactly; it more diplomatically states, “generally, noise generated by vehicles causes some discomfort not only to drivers but also to pedestrians around the vehicles,” but we know what it really means.

A better sound makes the EV more appealing to buyers who want that classic gas engine “feel.” It can also appeal to everyone else by having a sound that can be heard by those around the vehicle without being exceptionally irritating.

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Of course, this is a patent, not a final product. The filing was published on June 5th, but the application was made on June 20, 2024. Hyundai has not announced this as a product coming to a vehicle, but with future products like the forthcoming Ioniq 6 N and maybe even a production N Vision 74, we wouldn’t rule out seeing this advancement of the Ioniq 5 N’s system sooner rather than later.

Dodge Did Something Similar

If the concept of using the vibrations of an e-motor sounds similar, you may be thinking of what Dodge promised when it announced the Charger Daytona and its Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust. In the original iterations of that, the vibrations from the motors were harnessed, filtered, and amplified through a series of pipes that created a supposedly authentic soundtrack derived directly from the motor. What we eventually got was a watered-down and synthetic speaker system sent through a piped system to an exhaust outlet, which is nowhere near as cool, but doesn’t sound terrible.

Source: DPMA