KIA's 'bizarre' experiment: If you ride an electric car and listen to this song, your battery will soon run out

One thing many people probably realize is that our emotions are sometimes dictated by our environment; For example, when listening to music. Perhaps because of that, KIA recently did a small experiment to evaluate the impact of music on the driver's behavior, thereby assessing the effect when using an electric vehicle.

According to research results, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 is considered to be the music that helps the driver control the car effectively, in contrast to The Weeknd's Blinding Lights, which is said to drain the battery. go faster.

The model used in the test is the KIA EV6 GT-Line S version.

In this test, the driver will use the KIA EV6 GT-Line S version, equipped with 14 Meridian speakers. According to the information learned, the test-driving participants are all people who have never had experience with electric vehicles before, they will drive the KIA EVV6 on a distance of 29km to simulate normal road conditions, from a stop roads, roads in residential areas, wide and open roads to zigzag roads.

All test drivers will listen to music according to a fixed playlist, at the same volume level and the same type of sound setting.

The playlist used for the experiment includes the following songs: Awake (by Tycho), Hello (by Adele), Blinding Lights (by The Weeknd), Nautilus (by Anna Meredith), Fade (by Kanye West) and Symphony No. 9 in D Minor / Op. 125 (by Beethoven).

Fast-paced music has an impact on driving style.

The recorded results showed that when listening to classical music of Beethoven, the test driver controlled up to 4 times more effectively than other songs / tracks. In contrast, what they showed when listening to The Weeknd's fast-paced Blinding Lights songs showed up to 2 times less efficiency when the driver tended to step on the accelerator more, ie use more power and lead to faster battery drain.

Finally, Adele's Hello, which is a Ballad song with a medium tempo, offers a more emotional style, like the song is mixed from gentle to fierce.

On a distance of 29km, the driver used an average amount of energy equivalent to a travel of 36.17km. Calculated on this total energy consumption, consumption when listening to classical music accounted for 7.7%, Ballad music accounted for 13.3% and fast tempo music accounted for 23.6%.

The test is carried out under the supervision of an expert in acoustic science.

This research was carried out under the supervision of Dr Duncan Williams, a lecturer in the Department of Science, Engineering and the Environment at the University of Salford. She is an expert in the science of sound.

After analyzing the data, Dr Duncan Williams concluded: "What we've seen from just two days of testing is that music can have a big effect on the actual distance traveled when using an electric vehicle. Different songs cause EDA activity to change and blood flow to increase, which directly affects driving style, and ultimately affects the range of the vehicle. If you want to go further, listen to music like Beethoven, or gentle classical music. If you don't care about the distance, play music with a fast tempo."