Kia Says Music Has "Dramatic Influence" On Real-World EV Range

The automaker argues that you will get better range if you listen to Beethoven...

By: Andrei Nedelea

Apr 12, 2022 at 6:08am ET

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Automakers sometimes conduct unusual experiments, like this one from Kia, which showed that the music you listen to while driving can have an impact on your electric vehicle’s range. The Korean automaker found a correlation between music and range after it performed an experiment which had drivers complete a fixed route in a Kia EV6 while listening to Beethoven’s Symhony No.9, as well as ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weekend.

The experiment, overseen by Dr. Duncan Williams, a lecturer at the University of Salford’s School of Science, Engineering and Environment, whois also an expert in acoustics and the science of sounds, concluded that

Playlists featuring ambient classical pieces and famous symphonic-form compositions from the likes of Beethoven can help drivers sustain battery power far better over other types of music genres and artists, including The Weeknd, Kanye West and Adele.

Up-tempo pop, hip-hop, and even soul ballad pop were found to impact EV range due to the effect these genres have in influencing driver behaviour and driving style.

For the experiment, they used two identical Kia EV6s, that were driven around an 18-mile test route while the drivers wore a device that tracks all their biometric measures. They found that while listening to Beethoven, the driver’s heart rate was 111 bpm on average, while when listening to The Weekend, that jumped to 171 bpm.

According to Dr. Williams,

What we found from only two days of testing was that music really can have a dramatic influence on the real-world driving range of an electric vehicle. Different songs resulted in varying electrodermal activity and blood volume increase for each of the participants.

In short: if you want to go further, listen to the likes of Beethoven and other relaxing classical music; if you’re not worried about range dropping a little more quickly, by all means put on some more high tempo tracks.