I dunno I find it stupid. Either enjoy the last remnants of v8 ICE or just move on and skip the idiotic fake exhaust.
this Dodge system is actually unique.
because while BMW had fake exhaust since forever it was playing on the INSIDE of the car making the owner feel like he’s driving a muscle car while on the outside his car sounded like a Honda Civic.
it was a clever scam from BMW - most people test driving the car would only hear the exhaust from the inside and ASSUME it sounded the same on the outside. but i knew BMW was using that tech and to me it sounded fake on the inside and on the outside it sounded pathetic and weak. It was disgusting.
anyway this Dodge system is actually playing on the OUTSIDE of the car … and through my headphones it sounded better than i expected …
BUT !
in the real world it will be different from headphones …
headphones being miniature speakers themselves mask the speaker-ness so to speak of that fake exhaust - but when you’re in the real world next to that car there will be nothing to mask the difference between that fake V8 sound and real V8 sound of the car next to it …
they might be able to fake a sound of a European Turbo V8 which have a more civilized sound to them, but those American Muscle Cars have a very raw sound to them that would be very hard / expensive to approach using a speaker system, let alone fill a large parking garage with that sound …
it is easy to create loud bass INSIDE the car but very hard to create it OUTSIDE the car because there is no sealed air volume to pressurize …
a sound system that faithfully reproduced the sound of a supercharged Hemi V8 with a tuned exhaust AT FULL VOLUME would be prohibitively large, heavy and expensive. instead they will end up with a shitty sound that will only fool casuals. it will neither be painfully loud nor will resonate in your chest.
on the other hand by having both inside and outside sound coming from the same electronic source they can do fun stuff like for example cancel it out for the driver so that pedestrians are alerted but the driver isn’t getting a headache … though that would be dumb since the driver is the one who paid for that sound.
my plug-in hybrid makes a “chime” sound when reversing to alert pedestrians, which is basically a glorified “beep” that commercial trucks make when backing up but it does sound way nicer than a beep.
the thing is that a chime is easy for speakers to play, while V8 rumble is not. you can play a chime using an iPhone speaker …
IMO electric cars should ABSOLUTELY play a sound to alert pedestrians but it probably shouldn’t be a V8 sound.
it should ALWAYS play when reversing, an when moving forward it should play for the first 1,000 feet or so of car’s travel perhaps, or until the car reaches 30 mph, whichever comes first.
once you’re out of a parking lot with pedestrians and on a road with cars there is no longer a point to it.
maybe also add a loud ultrasonic beep when starting the car to scare away any animals that may be chilling under the car.
if you’re driving a raised truck you may not see a small child over the hood and if your car is silent you may run them over, which is not good.
overall there will not be any good answers while EVs and ICEs co-exist. once the last of ICEs is dead we can begin to move towards something sensible.
average intelligence people certainly do love fake shit though. think of how ubiquitous imitation leather and wood are. fake leather is the ONLY seating option in ALL of Teslas for example.
Volvo actually offers plaid fabric seats as an option but it’s very hard to find them in the wild.
The dealers do not order them. Dealers are dumb animals. Dealer mentality is fake leather looks more expensive why order fabric as an option ? Dealers don’t understand that Volvo is supposed to be quirky … a Volvo is supposed to be PROUD of being a Volvo, not pretending to be a Mercedes.
Likewise the dumb animals also don’t understand that an electric car is supposed to be proud of being electric, not pretending to be an ICE.
except it’s even dumber because Electric cars are actually more expensive than ICE.
on the other hand the type of customer who buys a muscle car probably wants attention and how do you get attention when your car makes no sound ?
certain type of guys when they talk in the locker room always talk so loud that EVERYONE in the locker room can hear what they’re saying.
this system is for them.
well yeh think of yoru average dodge charger customer 
re Mercedes you’ve mentioned they are out of their fucking minds too now check out inside of new E class… 2024 Mercedes-Benz E-Class Will Feature Next-Gen Superscreen - Forbes Wheels
On top of the gaudy idiotic let me make your cabin into a giant phone menu … they have a built in selfie camera and tiktok account accessibility.
the pressure is on “Legacy Automakers” to prove that they aren’t “out of touch” with the young people.
investors don’t want to hold stock in companies whose customer base is aging.
of course CEOs of car companies are all in their 50s so it’s a struggle for them to try to relate to 20 somethings.
the easiest way to impress children is to make your car electric - the problem is there is only so much battery capacity to go around, only so much capacity of electrical grid and so on …
so these 50 year old CEOs have to think of ways to out tesla the tesla with idiotic gimmicks to make the kids think we’re cool …
when Tesla originally came out in 2012 i remember the most striking aspect of it was the huge 17" screen which was 3 times the size of the next biggest screen in a car … i remember wondering why doesn’t everybody else do that ?
and the answer was because you didn’t need a 17" screen in the car then just as you don’t need to play video games in the car today …
later it also came out that to cut costs Elon didn’t use automotive grade displays which started to fail …
so that was another reason why Elon was able to use a larger screen than the competition, because everybody else designed their screens to last in the harsh car environment while Elon had the growth mindset where he knew by the time these screens started to fail in a few years time he would have some other gimmick to bedazzle the retards who buy his garbage …
and besides, he didn’t have he luxury to worry about the long-term when he was barely surviving in the near term … which is why you probably don’t want to buy products from companies like Tesla …
unfortunately Tesla stock saw huge success and every other automotive CEO felt the pressure to emulate Elon’s strategies - good and bad
since Tesla hit it big other car companies are now abandoning common sense and quality in favor of gimmicks and cost cutting to compete with Tesla … they almost don’t have a choice.
many of these things ( like huge, distracting touch screens ) are universally recognized by car experts as bad things but in the end it’s not about making better products - it’s about selling people the garbage they demand.
personally i much prefer joystick type controls in a car like BMW I-Drive but those are all going away in favor of touch screens.
in the past you would get a Joystick in an Audi but a regular touch screen in a VolksWagen - in other words joystick was the premium option but touch screen was for the poors. but a touch screen still wasn’t cheap enough for Elon so he went with non-automotive grade touch screen and now every German luxury car has to copy his approach to try to survive.
it’s sad.