Nissan gives silent electric cars 'Blade Runner' appeal

A campaign backed by automakers and some lawmakers to make electric or hybrid cars noisier in a bid to increase safety for pedestrians and cyclists has taken a strange, “Blade Runner”-type twist.

Nissan sound engineers have announced that the Leaf electric car set for release next year will emit a “beautiful and futuristic” noise similar to the sound of flying cars -- or “spinners” -- that buzz around 2019 Los Angeles in Ridley Scott’s dystopian thriller based on a Philip K. Dick science fiction novel.

“We decided that if we’re going to do this, if we have to make sound, then we’re going to make it beautiful and futuristic,” Toshiyuki Tabata, Nissan’s noise and vibration expert, told Bloomberg. “We wanted something a bit different, something closer to the world of art.”

Automakers since 2007 have been exploring ways to increase the sound of electric or hybrid vehicles, which run almost silently at low speeds, after concerns were expressed by advocates for the blind and for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. Nissan says its system would turn off after the car reaches 12 mph, when, it says, tire noise is deemed loud enough to warn a pedestrian or cyclist that a car is approaching.

An act going through Congress -- The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2008 -- would require a federal ruling on whether a minimum sound level for hybrid and electric cars is needed and, if so, for the Department of Transportation to set that limit. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will release a report on the issue in January. And Nissan, alongside Toyota and Honda, has responded to concerns in Japan over sound-emission safety, and in a combined report with Japanese government agencies will present its findings later this year.

Some reports suggest that in the future, car owners will download a sound for their car the way many consumers buy ring tones for their cellphones. No word yet on whether electric vehicles will -- a la “Blade Runner” replicants -- get implanted memories, though.

-- Craig Howie

Top photo: A futuristic car, or "spinner," in the 1982 film "Blade Runner." Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Bottom photo: Nissan's Leaf. Credit: EPA

Google archives LIFE photos -- classic wheels included

It was a simpler time, a happier time, when the American auto industry was bubbling with pride and Cadillacs had useful extras such as shower attachments. This picture comes from LIFE magazine’s online archive, hosted by Google. There are millions of amazing photographs. Some have never been published and are now available for the first time.

As a way of doing some quality net surfing, this user experience can't easily be beat. And there are plenty of gems for car lovers, including the first Rolls-Royce and a shot of Steve McQueen in his beautiful Jaguar XK-SS. There are hot rods, Jeeps, Ferraris, all sorts. Although there is a major blunder: Argentine racing icon Juan Manuel Fangio is first described as Mexican and then his Lancia car is called a Lancie. But we’ll have to forgive them because there’s such a magic to many of these images.

-- Colin Ryan

Photo: LIFE / Google

EBay cars under $10,000 that beat the pants off a Nissan Versa

Nissan’s announcement last week that it would offer a stripped-down version of its Versa model for under $10,000 -– a Sub-Versa, if you will -– occasioned a lot of media attention and interest, as if there was something to celebrate. To me it sounds like 1.6 liters of boredom, a mouthful of sand to thirsty car-buyers. Please. Ten grand? I can put you in automotive paradise for $10,000. Walk this way.

Go to www.motors.ebay.com and follow the link to “Cars & Trucks.” Don’t specify a make or model but simply order the 50,000 or so listings by price, and use the advanced search function to specify items with a “Buy It Now” price. What you’ll discover is an Elysian field of depreciation as the awesome rides of yesteryear -– in some cases cars that dominated automotive buff book covers just a couple of years ago –- are dispensed with for a fraction of their original sticker. With the recent spike in gas prices and the downturn in the economy, people are eating their cars -– “literally!” as Joe Biden would say.

Yes, these cars are a little older, but if you were to compare, wheel-to-wheel, the new Versa with, say, a 1991 BMW 850i –- a 12-cylinder supercoupe on 18-inch Hamann wheels and with only 47,120 miles on the clock –- well, your head would explode. The Bimmer has more technology in its ashtray.

So before you submit to lowered automotive expectations, consider these choices, all on EBay for $10,000 or less (after the jump):

Gay car site gets unwanted "Yes on 8" ads

Gaywheels.com, a website aimed at gay car buyers, said the ad space on its home page was "hijacked" today by supporters of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in California.

Joe LaMuraglia, publisher of the New Jersey-based website, was in Tennessee this afternoon when he found out that folks in California who went to www.gaywheels.com were being greeted with a page festooned with "Yes on 8" ads.

"We are very upset about this and apologize to any site visitors from the state of California that might have been offended by the ads," LaMuraglia said in a statement posted on the site.

"They in no way reflect our political beliefs and for the record are diametrically opposed to our value system."

How the ads got on the site is a bit of a mystery.

The ads apparently were placed through Google's AdSense service, which LaMuraglia uses to generate ad revenue for Gaywheels.com. LaMuraglia said it was his understanding that his agreement with Google allowed him to block all political advertising from his site and until today, no political ads had ever appeared on Gaywheels.com.

Google has been a bit opaque in explaining how the Proposition 8 ad got on the site, he said. And even after LaMuraglia demanded that the ads be removed, a couple of hours passed before they were gone.

A spokeswoman for the pro-Proposition 8 campaign denied targeting its ads at Gaywheels.com.

Aptera's Management Mystery

Will Aptera Motors Inc. be the latest electric car startup to throw its founder under the bus? The Carlsbad company -- which is taking $500 deposits on an as-yet-unreleased, three-wheel electric car that it says will get 120 miles on a charge and cost less than $30,000 -- said today it had hired a new chief executive, auto industry vet Paul Wilbur. With experience at Ford, Chrysler, sports car maker Saleen and major industry suppliers, Wilbur seems like a competent choice.

The problem is that the company already had a CEO, Steve Fambro, who founded the company five years ago. According to an Aptera spokesman, Fambro will become chief technical officer, since "it is a much better role for him to concentrate on vehicle development."

If this sounds a bit like last year's soap opera at Tesla Motors, we hear you. That company's founder, Martin Eberhard, stepped down from the CEO job just over a year ago to be "president of technology," a move Tesla said at the time would allow him to "focus on...the advancement of our core technologies." The company said that Eberhard had been planning on making the transition since early in the year and was on board with the changes.

Yet just four months later, Eberhard left company management completely, trailing plenty of fire and brimstone that he later distributed liberally on the Internet, including the message that he was forced out. 

Site for square eyes: Nissan Cube hits the web

Since there seems to be a lot of Nissan Cube fans in this neck of the cyber-woods, they might be interested to know that there’s now a dedicated website. Aimed almost relentlessly at young people, it features all sorts of things -- some obviously Cube-related, others not so much.

One cool aspect is the ‘art car’ feature. Nissan gave two Cubes each to the Pratt Institute in New York and the Brooks Institute film school in Santa Barbara, and told the students to do their things. The Pratt contingent went arty while the Brooks brothers and sisters made a short film. The results can be seen on the site, along with a photo gallery.

The production version of the Cube for North America makes its debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show on November 19. Before then, however, viral marketing will take in things like Facebook, Twitter and whatever social networking sites happen to be hot at the time.

-- Colin Ryan

Image: Nissan