Skip to main content

Brigade launches QVS sound system for hybrid and EVs

Electronic vehicles (EVs) are a technical marvel – but vulnerable road users (VRUs) can’t hear them, which creates obvious safety problems. Brigade Electronics says help is at hand with its Quiet Vehicle Sounder (QVS), a speaker system which the company says reduces collisions between pedestrians and hybrid and EVs. The QVS, also known as an acoustic vehicle alerting system, simulates the sound characteristics of an internal combustion engine by emitting a blend of bbs-tek white sound frequencies th
March 21, 2019 Read time: 1 min
Electronic vehicles (EVs) are a technical marvel – but vulnerable road users (VRUs) can’t hear them, which creates obvious safety problems.


4065 Brigade Electronics says help is at hand with its Quiet Vehicle Sounder (QVS), a speaker system which the company says reduces collisions between pedestrians and hybrid and EVs.  

The QVS, also known as an acoustic vehicle alerting system, simulates the sound characteristics of an internal combustion engine by emitting a blend of bbs-tek white sound frequencies that are used in vehicle reversing alarms.

According to Brigade, the solution changes pitch according to the speed of the vehicle and produces a sound that a VRU can identify as a vehicle.

The QVS can be retrofitted to most commercial vehicles and works from a 12 or 24 volt power source to avoid draining the power of a hybrid vehicle or EV, the company adds.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Terrestrial solution to stellar shortcomings
    December 5, 2013
    Inherent weaknesses in satellite communications are leading several countries to re-evaluate terrestrial-based backup systems. There is a tale frequently told in satellite navigation circles, of how landing systems at Newark Airport were disrupted by a truck driver using GPS jamming equipment as he drove along the New Jersey Turnpike. While there was no threat to flight safety as the interference to GPS reference stations being tested, the story highlights how apparently benign threats have the potential t
  • Extra enforcement key to cutting road casualties in The Netherlands
    November 27, 2013
    While The Netherlands already has some of the safest roads in the world it has ambitious plans to make them safer still, as Jon Masters discovers. In virtually all periodical studies and comparisons of countries’ road safety performance, the Netherlands is consistently in the top three and often leads the world, depending on how casualty figures are compared. According to the International Traffic Safety Data & Analysis Group (IRTAD) of the International Transport Forum, road deaths per capita have falle
  • Foundation funds research for informed campaigning
    April 29, 2015
    ITS International talks to Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the transport research and lobbying organisation, the RAC Foundation. It is through the eyes of an economist that Professor Stephen Glaister, emeritus professor of transport and infrastructure at Imperial College London and director of the RAC Foundation, views current and future transport problems. Having spent 30 years at the London School of Economics and another 10 at Imperial, the move to the RAC Foundation was a radical departure from
  • USDoT looks at the costs and potential benefits of connected vehicles
    October 26, 2017
    David Crawford looks at latest lessons learned from the trials of connected vehicles in the US. The progress of connected vehicle (CV) technologies takes centre stage among the hot topics highlighted in the September 2017 edition – the first since 2014 – of the ‘ITS Benefits, Costs and Lessons Learned’ survey from the US ITS Joint Program Office (JPO). The organisation is an arm of the US Department of Transportation (USDoT).