This year’s Tokyo Motor Show featured some of the most amazing vehicles ever, ranging from dent proof EVs to driverless smart cars. Giving competition to big names like Toyota and Honda, Nissan also jumped in with its latest creation ‘Canto’.
‘Canto’ which literally translates to ‘I sing’ in Italian was launched in Tokyo Motor Show last week. The vehicle doesn’t sing, of course, instead, produces a demonic sound that warns pedestrians of its presence.
“What you just heard was the sound of the future. It is a sound that we call ‘Canto.’ Soon, it will be heard from our Nissan cars on streets around the world,” as told by Nissan EVP, Daniele Schillaci, to the press.
Having engines that work more quietly than the regular internal combustion engines, EVs have both good and bad implications. While an engine producing almost no sounds is good for the environment, it may cause trouble for some occasional cyclist or a pedestrian who might have stuffed his ears with headphones, or not, because the engine really produces no sounds at all. There are 35% chances for EVs and hybrids to hit a pedestrian and 57% to be involved in a crash with cyclists, according to a U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) published report.
Nissan is not the first neither the only car maker coming up with the sound making vehicles to warn pedestrians or passer-bys, others have been doing that too. Chevrolet Volt makes a chirping sound, Prius hums, and Toyota hybrid Rav4 beeps. Nissan is also working on making completely autonomous intelligent cars that would need no driver.