Scientific Article

A lexicon to describe specific sounds of the electric car cabin: A verbal approach to comfort improvement

¹ UTC, Alliance Sorbonne Université, Laboratoire Roberval, 1 rue Roger Couttolenc, 60200 Compiégne, France
² STMS Ircam-CNRS-SU, 1, place Igor-Stravinsky, 75004 Paris, France
³ Renault Group, 1 Av. du Golf, 78280 Guyancourt, France

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 4 April 2025
Accepted: 6 February 2026

Abstract

Electric vehicles are now part of the everyday automotive landscape. The resulting sonic experience is a major challenge for driver comfort. Despite this challenge being known, no solution reaching general consensus has yet been proposed. This might be due to the lack of a common culture of the sound or the expected sonic target in electric vehicles, in opposition to what existed for thermal engine. This work proposes a decisive tool to enhance communication on sound description in the electric car cabin. Inspired by soundscape studies, the methodology consists in using a semi-structured questionnaire oriented toward sound description and judgment with 12 acousticians working on electric vehicles. A verbal analysis identifies 11 specific sound names describing this sonic environment. Definitions that include three levels of description: causal, reduced and hedonic as well as audio illustrations, are proposed for each sound name. The lexicon is validated by the same group of acousticians and available online.