This is the Kiira, an electric vehicle that has been built and successfully tested by professors and students at Makerere University in Uganda. They’ve been working on it since about 2009. Most of the parts were built in Uganda, and the car was assembled there. Some are hailing it as proof that African science and technology is pushing forward at a rapid rate. Others…are not so sure it was money well spent. Listen in to episode 346, and you can decide for yourself. You’ll hear from some of those involved in the project.

The Kiira is one of three stories from Africa on the podcast this week. We’ll also bring you a story about the arrival of a new fiber optic cable in Liberia, and what it might mean for Internet access, and the country’s economy. The third story is about a unique project for recycling plastic bottles in Nigeria. How so? Well…how about using them to build a house. Yep, a house.

We’ll also talk about how a US company’s products have been implicated in Syria’s net crackdown, and in Burma as well. And you’ll hear about Instant WILD, a phone and web app that allows you to help scientists discover new animal species.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

The work is being done by the Warwick Manufacturing Group, which has been working with British car makers for years to fine-tune the sounds of its gas-powered vehicles.

“The sound of a car can have a big impact on what you think is the quality or brand of that car, especially if it is a premium or sports car” said Warwick’s Paul Jennings. “So manufacturers go through a lot of trouble to make sure their cars sound absolutely right.”

Paul Jennigs with ELVIN (Photo: University of Warwick)

“Electric vehicles and hybrids are alarmingly quiet. The concern is that as a road user, as a pedestrian or as a cyclist, we’re just not aware of their presence. And therefore there’s a real danger that there could be an accident.”

And so Jennings and his team are trying to figure out how to add warning sounds to electric vehicles. They are testing a range of sounds in the lab – everything from fairly regular “car” noises to UFO sounds straight out of “The Jetsons.”
Then, the sounds are put into a small, green and white experimental delivery truck called ELVIN, or The Electric Vehicle with Interactive Noise. As ELVIN makes his way around campus, the researchers try out different sounds and see which ones are good at alerting people to the vehicle’s presence.

“ELVIN is great for us because it’s an electric vehicle that actually has a day job around campus, so we’re not doing anything artificial,” Jennings said. “He actually goes into and out of car parks, around pedestrian areas, and so actually goes into the scenarios that have been flagged up as potential safety problems.”

You Wouldn’t Want a World That Sounds Like This

A few miles down the road from Warwick, in the small town of Hitchin, Mark Allman-Ward grabs the wheel and takes off down the open road. He is sitting at a computer, actually, and the wheel he has grabbed is similar to the one used in computer racing games.

Allman-Ward is showing off the speed and sound of the sports car simulator that the company he works for, NoViSim, has created.

The company is helping the team at Warwick University create and test possible sounds for electric vehicles.
To do that, NoViSim has re-created the entire town of Hitchin in a computer simulation. You can walk around the town as pedestrian, testing possible situations where pedestrians and electric vehicles might encounter one another.

Allman-Ward demonstrates the difficulty in getting warning sounds just right. His simulated character approaches an intersection and the UFO noise can be heard approaching from behind.

“That noise works fine as a warning,” Allman-Ward said, “but listen to this.” He has set up the program so that every car has that UFO warning sound, and as they approach the traffic light, all of them begin to beep and boop. “You would not want to live in a world where this happens.”

But it begs the question: why not just make cars sound like…cars?

Paul Jennings and Mark Allman-Ward (Photo: University of Warwick)

A New Leaf

But something has to be done. The United States has already passed legislation requiring electric vehicles to make noise when traveling at slower speeds, and now Europe is turning its eye, or rather ear, to the problem as well.

Some manufacturers, like Nissan, are already a step ahead. The company’s all-electric Leaf comes with sounds for both forward and reverse at low speeds.

“It’s kind of like a high-pitched whining sound that’s annoying,” said Seattle resident and Leaf owner Rob Greenlee. “It’s not the kind of sound you expect from a car, and I’m constantly seeing people turn around and look at me with a blank stare on their face and say, what is that?”

Greenlee said he understands the need for warning noises, but that one of the primary reasons he bought the car is precisely because it runs quietly.

“I think we all had this perception that we like the roaring sound of that gas engine. I went through that phase too, when I was back in high school. I had that Plymouth Barracuda with the cherry bombs coming out from behind the car that made all kinds of noise,” he said. “But I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten a little more sensitive to sound, and it’s just cooler to be completely silent.”

Ring Tones for Cars

Clotaire Rapaille, who has been consulting for the automotive industry for decades, does not buy it.

“What people say is that they want a car that doesn’t make noise, but I don’t believe what they say. I love my car, and my car is like a personality for me. Give me a sound that reflects this personality, a sound that is a signature.”

“Think of all the possibilities that are suddenly open,” Rapaille said. “We have different ring tones for different cell phones; we can have different sounds for different kinds of cars.”

Paul Jennings of Warwick University worries, though, that personalization could be taken too far. Warning sounds, he said, may not work as effectively if every driver has his or her own.

Then again, he said, allowing cars to be completely silent would not be safe either.

“We’re in a transitional period right now, where we’re still mainly used to cars making a sound,” Jennings says. “We really want to encourage the introduction of these electric vehicles, and the last thing we want to do is put a barrier in for their safe implementation.”

Rest assured, say the sound experts, that one way or the other, the cost of adding noises to electric vehicles will end up in the sticker price.

The Sounds of the Chevrolet Volt

We also take a look at how some Haitians are working to recycle their trash into charcoal briquettes in a bid to stem the country’s deforestation problem. Reporter Amy Bracken has that story for us.

The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford will take us into the dark heart of Siberia to try to find out why Russian’s make such good computer criminals. How good, er, bad are they? The Russian government’s warned that they are “the best in the world.”

And speaking of pesky tech problems that won’t go away, how about piracy? It turns out that Hollywood might decide to completely pull out of Spain, because of the country’s horrible track record when it comes to stopping the distribution and sales of pirated DVDs.

Episode 286 also has a shout-out to Cristina Schaver and all the students in the 7th period “Information Technology in a Global Society” class at the American School of Madrid. Apparently, their teacher, Jamie Forslund, is making them listen to the Tech Podcast as homework. The horror…the horror.

Remember, our Facebook campaign (1,000 “likes” by the end of May) is doing great. Keep spreading the word. We’re also on Twitter too.

This episode was brought to you, musically, by that immense guitar talent, Eddie Van Halen. The track, for reasons that will be made clear if you listen to the podcast, or read this, is “Eruption.”

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to our podcast via RSS, iTunes, or email. Hey, we’re full service.

(Photo courtesy of Tesla Motors)

This week’s podcast comes to you not from The World newsroom in Boston, but the one in London. And since I’m here, let’s load up the show with some tech goodies from this side of the Big Pond. We lead with a podcast exclusive: an interview with bioinformatician David Aanensen, who works in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College in London. He and his team have created an app for the Google Android operating system called EpiCollect. The idea is elegantly simple: many scientists are out in the field gathering information on different infectious disease organisms worldwide. Much of that data ends up in databases at Imperial College. Geography is often of significance in comparing disease organisms across the planet. So, why not devise an open source smartphone app that allows the user in the field to enter relevent information directly into the phone, where it is automatically geo-tagged by the phone’s on-board GPS? Then, when there is a strong mobile data signal, the information on phone will synch directly back to the main database back in the lab. Indeed, why not?

We’ve also got an in-depth look at the present and future of the electric car. You can read more about the latest in electric car technology here and here. And here and here.

And we end with an interesting little cross-atlantic look at how politicians are using Twitter. You can check out Jennifer Golbeck’s research here.

We happen to be on Twitter ourselves, along with Facebook and FriendFeed.

This week’s musical guest: The 5th Dimension with “Up, Up and Away in My Beautiful Balloon.”