[Quietcars] Can You Hear My Prius Now?, The New York Times, December 24, 2008

[Nightingale, Noel]

Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/education/edlife/ideas-noise-t.html

Text:
Can You Hear My Prius Now?
Published: December 24, 2008

Unlike their clanking combustion counterparts, cars powered by electricity make nary a peep. That poses a problem for passersby - the blind in particular. Enter Everett Meyer and Bryan Bai, who met at the Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. They had an idea: make the Prius impossible to ignore. (Both graduated in June - Dr. Meyer from medical school; Dr. Bai with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering.) With seed money from the National Federation for the Blind, they built a system that attaches to a hybrid, mimicking a diesel engine's purr or a higher-pitched ping. Keep those windows rolled up should the Pedestrian Safety Act, now in committee, pass: it seeks to establish minimum sound levels for hybrids.