What the actual f…? How bizarre. Surely it would have been more cost effective to just not put in so much sound insulation? At least if I had one of those cars, I could re-purpose the “noise generator” loudspeaker for my mobile amateur radio station’s loudspeaker (I had to find a place to install a speaker for that on my current car).
Peter wrote:
peaking of noise generators,
That must be one of the most odd and stupid “inventions” ever 
I have one in mine as well. It’s supposedly impossible to turn off, but supposedly possible after all with some fancy and rather cryptic pushing of buttons and pedals. Which is even more odd thinking about it. Why not simply have it as an option on the menu? There are more stuff like that also. Some special configuration for the head lights as well as a special “winter configuration” (heating of the battery), and god knows what else.
The device is just a very crude loudspeaker and if you simply cut one of the two wires going to it, the car doesn’t notice. See that VW forum link I posted.
I have a hacked copy of VAG-COM, on an old laptop with a never-changing date, and can reconfig a load of stuff on the car with that, but I don’t recall a config option for the “noise maker”. It may be there; most of the CAN bus config bits were never reverse engineered, and the full docs on the cars have not leaked out, evidently. That’s the great thing about “open protocols” like CAN – nobody else can make competing products 
The public config menu is very limited.
What is more amazing is that you can remap the engine (not with VAG-COM though; special tools exist for that, and they get ever more complicated as VW work to stop people doing it – even to the length of reporting a fake ECU version – to go up from 180HP to 250HP++ and get more MPG at the same time. It just doesn’t meet some specific aspect of the 2012 emission regs. But, as we now know, VW, and most of the other car makers in Germany and elsewhere, cheated on the emissions anyway, auto-detecting test conditions… VW took the heat but the others all did it to some extent.
You’ll probably know that the noise generator is back. By EU-law all electric vehicles as of a certain date of manufacture need to emit a sound below 30 kph. When test driving the car I bought I could hear it but it was not intrusive. The measure makes sense. And actually handy as it is a bit of a pain having to sometimes open the window, and say ‘good morning!’ to an unsuspecting pedestrian/biker in front of me on a narrow lane.
aart wrote:
You’ll probably know that the noise generator is back. By EU-law all electric vehicles as of a certain date of manufacture need to emit a sound below 30 kph.
That makes total sense. But deliberately increasing noise inside a petrol/diesel-powered car does not.
Airborne_Again wrote:
But deliberately increasing noise inside a petrol/diesel-powered car does not.
My car is fully electric, and it still has this sound It’s very dimmed and nice sound (kind of “sci-fi large engine sound”), but still, According to Mazda it’s there to give the driver “ease of mind” or something like that. It does give a cue to how much power the car outputs, but all in all it’s 200% unnecessary. The procedure to turn it on/off is like this:
The car must be in P with and turned off
turn on the “ignition” without starting the car (don’t press the brake pedal when pushing the “on” button)
press and hold the brake and accelerator pedals simultaneously
within 10 seconds, push the + paddle 5 times then the – paddle 5 times (paddles on the steering wheel for adjustment of recuperation)
There is no indication. Just drive and listen
I see now that lots of people turns it on again, so maybe Mazda got a point. Have to try it today.
Tried it. No more strange sci-fi large engine sound. Buut, I think I actually will turn it back on There is something about that subtle cue it gives to the amount of power the car is using that is lost
Not sure where to post this. I can’t find thread that covers alternative fuels for aircraft. Should I make one?
https://www.phocuswire.com/Destinus-heads-Spanish-effort-to-boost-hydrogen-flight
Nice to see that Spain is involved, albeit with EU money
Post moved to a possibly better thread. Also the original thread had a huge 1st post which made it impossible to promote to the home page banners.
Has any progress been made on the multiple problems with hydrogen? Especially in aircraft where weight is an issue, as are “explosive” things. One of many advantages of liquid fuels is that while they can make a big fire, there is a considerable experience in how to make that very unlikely.
