Automakers facing e-car sound dilemma

Christoph Meier, a sound engineer at Mercedes-Benz, typically spends time making engine noise less jarring. For the carmaker’s new electric models, he’s had to do the opposite — create sound.

For Daimler’s e-Smart city car, Meier and his team invented a “sonorous purring” that was pitched higher than conventional vehicles, while Mercedes’s €416,500 SLS AMG Coupe Electric Drive gets huskier tones to reflect its power.

“People expect some exterior noise from a vehicle, because we all grew up with the ‘vroom vroom’ of combustion engines,” said Meier, who oversees 250 people as head of powertrain acoustics at the company.