- Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am and Mercedes have debuted an app that uses sensors to give users control over the way recorded music plays in the car.
- The technology, dubbed Sound Drive, was rolled out during the CES technology show in Las Vegas this week.
- We experienced the app in person in a Mercedes EQE SUV with Will.i.am himself behind the wheel and at the controls.
Electric cars offer an intriguing aural template. Lacking the visceral thrum and accelerative crescendos we have long associated with speed, their preternatural silence begs for a soundtrack. Automakers have attempted to solve this perceived issue by contracting with musicians or famed composers, but the results often end up sounding like a gargling space-pod piloted by Rick Deckard. Or a Theremin.
Fortunately, Mercedes-Benz has pounded all of the keyboards, seeking fresh noise for its battery-powered vehicles. As its collaborator, it chose producer, technologist, philanthropist, Black Eyed Peas founder, and Grammy award winner Will.i.am.
The result is Sound Drive, a production-ready app. Utilizing a suite of sensors connected to a car’s accelerator, steering wheel, suspension, and brakes, the system registers inputs and uses them to affect how recorded music is transmitted through the speakers, transforming the driver into something of a DJ, and as C/D contributor Tamara Warren noted, reconfiguring the expression “The Wheels of Steel” for the contemporary era.
“That means every single drive will have a different version of whatever song that they’ve been driving to,” Will.i.am tells us in an interview at CES in Las Vegas. “It’s a pretty transformative technology.”
To test the efficacy of his efforts, we took a spin with Will in a Sound Drive–equipped electric Mercedes EQE SUV. Since he’s a musician, and we are not, we let Will drive. Sound Drive seems to begin each song in a muted muffle, like you are listening to the music through a stack of wet mattresses, or twisted saxaoboeatubaphone on the cover of Roland Kirk’s Case of the 3 Sided Dream in Audio Color album. But as you get going, the song’s elements begin to infiltrate and crispen, like a digital camera seeking focus. The go pedal adds or deducts volume. The steering wheel bends and warps, like Prince’s keyboardist Dr. Fink. The suspension adds rollick, like the music is being fed through a gently pulsating chipper.
Testing It Out on a Vegas Night Drive
U-turns offer ideal opportunities for exploring the systems’ capabilities, as they combine sharp inputs from all the linked componentry. Will takes advantage of this on our night drive through the back streets of Las Vegas, whilst the banger “Players,” by Coi Leray, booms on the Benz’s Burmester audio system. The experience has an undiagnosed impact on our limbic system, and we can’t help but giggle. Like so many modern in-car features, it’s nonsensical, but kind of delightful.
We worry that the compelling nature of this sonic manipulation might inspire recklessness. But Mercedes chief technical officer Markus Schäfer assures us that there are proactive strictures in place to prevent such tomfoolery. “There’s a lot of intelligence in this system,” Schäfer says. “We all agreed it should not lead to some extended driving behavior which you normally would not do. And it’s good to always observe speed limits. So, for example, if you live in a 35-mph zone, then the sound will not unfold more beyond 35.” So much for a 100-mph aural orgasm when the drop hits, bro.
We’re unclear how such controls would prevent the perpetration of a low-speed slalom sound effects Gymkhana, or the kind of pumping brake-beats that our mother used to delight in pedaling when listening to her Donna Summer eight-tracks in our Malaise Era childhood. But, hey, it’s not our liability.
The platform will, eventually, not only support the transmogrification of pre-recorded music but incorporate a makers’ component, allowing artists to compose tracks specifically to be manipulated via the app. Before we finish our drive with Will, he plays us a couple of these songs, palpating and customizing them via an overlay of our 12-mph antics. But as we approach our destination, he stops again, and scrolls through the list of available tracks.
“I know it’s corny,” he says, as he selects “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. “But I can’t help it.”
Brett Berk (he/him) is a former preschool teacher and early childhood center director who spent a decade as a youth and family researcher and now covers the topics of kids and the auto industry for publications including CNN, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics and more. He has published a parenting book, The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting, and since 2008 has driven and reviewed thousands of cars for Car and Driver and Road & Track, where he is contributing editor. He has also written for Architectural Digest, Billboard, ELLE Decor, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure and Vanity Fair.