Electric Truck Sound Design: A User-Centered Psychoacoustic Approach to Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems

Electric vehicles (EVs), especially trucks, are becoming more common and present a distinct acoustic challenge compared with typical internal combustion engine vehicles. Their silent functioning poses a safety concern to pedestrians. This study seeks to provide a user-centered and psychoacoustically informed design methodology for acoustic vehicle alerting systems (AVAS), especially for electric trucks. Building on the preliminary findings of a semantic differential analysis that compared the perceived sound characteristics of internal combustion engine vehicles and EVs with and without AVAS, the study describes a design methodology. The procedure used in the study incorporates qualitative methods, such as open-ended surveys and jury tests, and quantitative methods incorporating psychoacoustical components. The emphasis is on balancing the intended “electric” and “truck-like” sound characteristics. The work describes a unique design method for user-centered and psychoacoustically informed AVAS for EVs that contributes to the expanding work to develop effective and user-friendly solutions for improving electric truck AVAS perception in urban contexts.