Baby, You Can Compose My Car

You may have experienced a strange feeling in a car park over the last few years, where you hear a sound that resembles a choir of angels. Have no fear, your time isn’t up (yet). It’s one of a range of sounds that car manufacturers are required by law to add to electric vehicles (EVs) to warn pedestrians and other road users that a car is approaching.

And with the drive to electric gathering momentum, it’s a sound we’ll be hearing a lot more of in the future. Comedian John Robins takes a drive in an EV, and talks to some of the composers and musicians involved in designing the sounds that are changing the world around us. Will new cars on the market echo the old internal combustion engines we're familiar with, or will our sonic landscape change forever?

Contributors:
Jean-Michel Jarre, composer, musician
Renzo Vitale, composer, musician, creative director for sound design at BMW Group
John Kallen, composer, musician, co-founder & Creative Lead of Audio UX
Jay Kapadia, musician, creative sound director for General Motors
Roisin Kiberd, writer on technology, author of The Disconnect and creative writing lecturer at the University of Galway, Ireland

Producer: Fiona Clampin
Executive Producer: Leonie Thomas
Sound mix: Mike Woolley
An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4