How do you warn oblivious pedestrians that a near-silent electric vehicle is approaching? The engines in non-electric cars (meaning nearly 99 percent of the new cars sold every year) typically make enough noise that you’d hear one coming. Electrics? Not so much, so most automakers solve this problem by having their EVs emit a futuristic alert tone, something like a robot orchestra warming up, but less whimsical, at low speeds. Fiat is not most automakers, and the company’s solution for the new Fiat 500 is a little different and a lot more melodious.
To explain what Fiat’s done here, we must segue into classic Italian cinema. No, seriously—the pedestrian warning tone Fiat created, which the company says will be available sometime after the 500 formally launches, will be a melody derived from the Federico Fellini’s 1973 film Amarcord. Pedestrians take note: If you suddenly hear music from a semi-autobiographical satire of Fellini’s youth spent in Fascist 1930s-era Italy, you might imminently be run over by a new 500.
As that 500 approaches, you’ll surely appreciate how the audible warning you’re given came from a movie considered one of the Fellini’s best films, one that even won an Oscar. But it’s the score of the film, by famed composer Nino Rota, that directly inspired the choice. The theme song is nostalgic, even saccharine, a distinct aural cue to invoke la dolce vita, the romance of the era of the original 500. Take a listen in the video below, where the 500’s new melody is compared to that of some competitors.
If you slept through your foreign cinema class and started glazing over a bit at the last paragraph, here’s another way to think of it: The composer of the 500’s warning song wrote the theme to The Godfather. And in the future, if that’s what you want to play when the 500 rolls by, maybe you can make it happen.
Fiat’s president, Olivier Francois, tells us in the video above that these warning sounds will be “like ringtones”—something you can download and change. It’s not clear exactly how it works, and Fiat claims that even the Amarcord melody won’t be available right when the vehicle launches.
It doesn’t seem likely that you’ll be able to just broadcast your Spotify playlist to surrounding pedestrians, because automakers tend to devote a lot of development resources to ensuring that the sound is distinct enough to effectively warn others, but doesn’t drive the car’s own occupants crazy. But whatever sounds Fiat eventually lets you download to the car, nothing on the road will sound quite like a Fiat 500 when it launches.
