Bose wants to apply noise canceling in cars

Wouldn't this...theoretically, be an issue with police/emergency vehicles?

I'm not sure there's specifically a law that you must be able to hear the vehicles if their sirens are on, and there's obviously a visual aspect to the vehicles that you should be paying attention to, i'm just envisioning an era with all noise-canceling vehicles making the sirens of emergency vehicles moot point aside from a pedestrian point of view (...and then, there's noise canceling headphones already, so....)

And then, as well, honking becomes moot point i guess too?

Again, i get someone can have their music so loud they can't hear any of it anyways, but to actually have a technology inside your vehicle to make certain you don't, just seems....counter-productive, unless all vehicles go driverless and you don't have to pay attention to audio ques on the roadways

Unless the noise cancellation is targeting specific noises, rather then all ambient noises, like the article, kinda, sorta, implies, but doesn't also specifically say it doesn't...

 

Noise cancelling doesn't have to (and probably can't) cover the higher sounds frequencies which contain speech, sirens, etc.
With active noise cancelling you can always control which frequencies you "counter".

 

If it's intelligent enough to not block out specific noises, or only block out specific noises, either one, then that'd be pretty cool.

 

I am fairly certain that they already do this to a certain degree. One of my clients is a GM dealership, and the mechanics were showing me the noise-cancelling stuff. That thing in the back of most newer gm vehicles that looks like a subwoofer is a noise cancelling speaker.

 

They should give Electric Cars an engine noise instead. They very dangerous, especially for elderly people who can't hear that well anymore.

 

They are.

https://electrek.co/2019/01/10/tesla-model-3-safer-noise-machine/
https://electrek.co/2018/02/27/electric-automakers-quiet-noise-devices-pedestrian-accidents/

 

Can it block out my significant other one week per month?

 

I think it's only meant to remove road, engine, and wind noise, nothing else.
Also, notice how they mentioned it would make stuff like in-car phone conversations easier. If it could cancel out all frequencies, then you would be muted (which, in a technological perspective, sounds fascinating).
It's worth pointing out that active noise cancellation in general doesn't work well when the sound changes too much. This is mostly because of how slow the speed of sound is. So for example if another car was honking at you, you're always going to hear at least a tiny bit of that because for a brief moment, you and the audio processor are hearing that sound at the same time. Once the algorithm figures out the counter-wave, that's when the sound would be silenced. But since a siren typically has a fluctuating sound, I don't think it could be entirely silenced.

Putting a bit of a twist on what you said there:
Although active noise cancellation is pretty cool, it isn't hard to drown out road, engine, and wind noise with music. You don't even have to turn the volume up that high.
That being said, I never understood why so many car reviewers make such a big fuss about such noise. Sure, a quieter cabin is always nice, but how many people commute in total silence?

 

Your car should already have the technology for that - just sit in the drivers seat, roll up the windows, lock the doors, and crank up the volume.
EDIT:
If that's not enough, press the "panic" button on the remote to make them go away.

 

There's no law that pertains to blocking noise from outside the vehicle.

As for this technology, high end cards already do this.
Example, S class mercedes has double-pane windows and lots of sound isolation.

Loud noises outside are hard to hear.

 

It's not new for cars. If it works well is another story. Once you cancel a certain noise, something else starts to get annoying.

 

Just do not move from prescribed location. Otherwise you may end up being hit by waves having sum amplitude 4 times as high.

 

I would think it would work well for cancelling out shite music from other vehicles

 

They've been in the automotive space for quite some time tinkering away with different ideas, my favourite being this old clip

Re noise cancelling I would have thought that it would be better applied to exhausts as a form of muffler than trying to counteract NVH in the cabin as any noise cancelling system I've ever tried has always either introduced its own background noise which I find irritating in it's own right

 

So, I spent 5000 bucks for my car's exhaust to make its sound canceled by a speaker? Anyway, tyres frequency is around 20 Hz, I guess that the cheap speakers makers put in their cars can't do anything for it...

 

Another reason to never get a newer car if I can not disable this kind of crap.
This tech couldn't handle my exhaust on either of my cars.
The biggest new tech worth a damn on newer cars is programmable electric power steering.

 

You can always stab a screw driver threw the audio cancelling speakers . I bet this will disable em!

 

I think this works for power steering, too...

 

Except they're also the main sound system's speakers, so you'll lose your music too.