In The Future, The Sound From Electric Cars Will Help Plants Grow

The nature of a car is to harm the environment. The fact was true till recently, i.e. before the appearance of electric vehicles. EVs too, however, can reduce or at most, eliminate the said harmful effects. But how about making cars useful to the environment.

Ayax, a Toyota manufacturer and distributor in Uruguay, claims to be working on this idea. How, you ask? It wants electric cars to emit a sound that will boost the growth of plants around it.

Now it might sound (pun intended) as an outlandish thought but the company might be on to something here. As it mentions on its website, ¡°Global research on how noise affects plants shows that they react to specific waveform spectrum vibrations. When exposed to a specific range of frequencies, plants show better growth and absorption of nutrients.¡±

This formed the basis of the Hy audio project, claimed to be the ¡°first AVAS sound that benefits the environment¡± by the company. Hy, as an abbreviation of ¡®Harmony¡¯, is being developed as a collaborative effort of Ayax and digital innovation firm The Electric Factory. The project also involves a professional sound designer and an expert on smart cities.

Do Plants Really Respond To Sound?

Not just respond, a strong relation between music (read sound) and plant growth has been established time and again. A research paper by Md. Emran Khan Chowdhury, Hyoun-Sub Lim and Hanhong Bae explains ¡°physiological and developmental changes including gene expression occur in plants due to physical environmental stimuli.¡±

Specifically for sound, it says ¡°Several investigations of the relationship between sound wave and plant growth promotion were discussed in this review, and the results of these studies indicated that there is a strong relationship between sound waves and plant growth.¡±

It goes on to explain that ¡°sound waves with specific frequencies and intensities have been shown to have significant effects on a variety of biological, biochemical, and physiological activities including gene expression in plants.¡±

Another research by National Center for Biotechnology Information, US confirms ¡°This study has demonstrated that a promising audible sound technique reduced the germination period of mung bean and improved the seedling growth of mung bean.¡± thus concluding ¡°sound is effective for stimulating the germination and growth of mung bean suggesting that this technique has interesting possibilities in biophysics.¡±

The exact reason, however, is ¡°not well known yet¡±. But who cares? As long as you know that sound waves can boost plant growth, why not give it a go?

Probably that¡¯s what Toyota thought, as it said yes to Ayax president Alejandro Curcio testing the idea on a fleet of Prius C hybrids in Uruguay. It even wants to test it in Brazil and Argentina within this month.

Hy Sound

In the pursuit of a higher purpose, Ayax has come up with a rather intriguing result. Let¡¯s just say you won¡¯t mind it at all. Similar to the ¡°binaural beats¡± or ¡°meditation sound¡± videos aplenty on YouTube, the frequency of oscillations increases as the car moves.

You can listen to the sound within the video below:

Future Proof!

There is a great potential here. With all the auto majors still trying to come up with their own sounds for their EV offerings, an audio that can have a positive environmental impact is a win-win product for the companies. So goes for Toyota, that is already using it.

The use will also be propelled as governments around the world are soon to make it a mandate to include artificial sounds in electric vehicles to alert pedestrians. So until the time the Hy sound is proved to have no said effect, it might just be the next big thing to adopt in the EV world.