The United States plans to force electric vehicles to be equipped with pedestrian warning devices, and will not let go of those produced in 1997.

CTOnews.com, February 8 (Xinhua)-- the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) has begun investigating whether hybrid and electric vehicles produced in 1997 should be equipped with pedestrian warning devices to alert pedestrians to their existence.

The Federal Motor vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 141 was adopted in 2018, requiring all electric and hybrid vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of 4536 kg or less to be equipped with pedestrian warnings to sound so that pedestrians can hear whether there are vehicles nearby. Because electric and hybrid vehicles are very quiet at low speeds, cars produced on or after March 1, 2021 are required to have some form of warning to warn pedestrians that cars are coming.

However, NHTSA received a petition in July last year arguing that all electric and hybrid vehicles, whenever produced, should have these silencers to warn pedestrians. The petitioner claims that hybrid and electric vehicles that do not apply the standard should be found to contain safety defects.

The agency's documents estimate that this could affect 9.1 million vehicles from brands such as Nissan, Jaguar, Polestar, Tesla, Ford, BMW, Kia, Honda, Porsche, Land Rover, Chrysler, Ferrari and Toyota.

The petitioner points out that the pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act 2009, which became law in January 2011, stipulates that all motor vehicles should be equipped with a device to "remind blind people and other pedestrians of the presence and operation of motor vehicles in the vicinity". To enable these pedestrians to travel safely and independently in urban, rural and residential environments. In a 2009 PSEA study, Congress found that hybrid and all-electric vehicles "make almost no sound" and that hybrid or all-electric vehicles in the future "will one day outnumber the number of internal combustion engines on national roads".

NHTSA officially began its investigation on January 27, and CTOnews.com learned that this will affect cars built as early as 1997. Saturn's EV1 is the only vehicle on the list that can be traced back so long. The 1999 DaimlerChrysler GEM NEV, and 2001 Toyota Prius, DaimlerChrysler GEM E825 and Honda Insight vehicles will also be affected.