Dodge Adds Fake Parts to Make EVs Sound Like Muscle Cars

JDzacovsky / shutterstock.com
JDzacovsky / shutterstock.com

It’s pretty much a known fact: the original is always better. And for electric vehicles, it’s so true that some companies are even adding fake parts to them to make them sound or appear more like the original gas guzzlers.

Yep, that’s how ridiculous this world has gotten.

According to Fox News, Dodge has come out with a new EV Charger. It’s called the Daytona SRT Banshee. For now, it’s just a concept car, meaning that the company has plans to start producing and selling it en masse. But at the moment, it’s still in the conception stage.

As such, it’s currently on display at the Chicago Auto Show, where hundreds can come by, look at it, hear it run, etc., in the hopes that it will gain the American public’s interest – enough interest to warrant putting the vehicle through the paces of being mass produced.

Now, to be sure, the car looks awesome. I mean, it’s super sporty, has all the bells and whistles you could ever want, and just looks mean. At first glance, die-hard muscle fans like my husband are pretty much in love.

That is until they learn that it’s an EV.

Then again, Dodge thinks they can remedy that little problem. They’ve added what they call a “fratzonic chambered exhaust.”

Basically, it’s a fake exhaust, as there isn’t an engine in the vehicle to require a real exhaust. And, yes, it does generate a sound much more “authentic” to muscle cars like the classic Charger or Challenger than some of the other options put out recently by other car manufacturers. (Other companies have begun playing a synthetic engine sound through a speaker).

But to say it’s a genuine muscle car sound is still quite a bit off-track. As one critic says, it sounds like “Motor City madness.” Take a listen for yourself.

As Muscle Cars & Trucks explains it, the fake exhaust creates a 126 dB roar or “voice” by generating a series of engine notes through a number of tubes, kind of like an organ. These notes go through “an amplifier and tuning chamber located at the rear of the vehicle.”

Now, as I mentioned before, the technology does sound far better than some EVs do. But it’s still nowhere near what a real muscle car sounds like.

To me, the idea is the same as vegan and vegetarian food producers always use. You know, the one where they take plants and “organic” materials and supposedly make them taste like meat. It’s a nice idea, but rarely do those foods ever actually taste like a steak, let alone a once-frozen and processed burger.

The whole electric thing is also a nice idea, one that, if it actually worked and was sustainable, could help to mitigate a lot of human-manufactured pollution.

However, just like this concept car, the idea isn’t fully intact or working yet. Sure, there are plenty of EVs already on the road. But as you might have heard, the technology is far from perfect. For starters, that expensive and extensive mining-required battery has many problems.

In case you didn’t know, the lithium needed to make them is pretty rare and hard to get to. It takes years and literal mountains of dirt and earth to extract enough for one battery. Besides, how many tons of those evil carbon emissions do you think the excavators, dump trucks, etc., needed to mine all of that produce?

Then, there’s the fact that, since many of the companies used to produce the batteries are located outside of the US, child labor is often involved.

And finally, once the battery is placed into a vehicle here in the States, there becomes a whole slew of other issues. You know, like the fact that it makes the car so heavy that tires erode faster, spitting bits of toxic plastics into our waterways and farmlands. Or what about the fact that they have problems working well in the cold, when hauling, or even traveling uphill?

As I said, it’s a nice idea. But when placed up against the original, EVs and this fake exhaust system just can’t compare.