Conti ii
John Mahoney4 Jul 2017
NEWS

Speakers are history thanks to new tech

Your car's dash, roof and even seats in the future will replace loudspeakers

Continental claims it has developed the world's first speaker-less car stereo that uses a vehicle's existing dashboard, seats and roof panel to play music.

Engineers from the German automotive supplier, more famous for its tyres, claim the breakthrough has come from new tech that can use existing surfaces to generate sound.

This development could see all car makers ditch conventional loudspeakers from vehicles saving huge cost and cutting weight, benefitting both fuel consumption and emissions.

Continental have converted a Mercedes C-Class that is capable of playing music without any speakers on board to prove the system works.

The technology plays music by using sound actuators that consists of a magnet and a coil that vibrate to transmit audible frequencies along the surface of the vehicle.

Engineers claim, in effect, they can turn the entire car into one giant speaker using this technique.

Cleverly, the speaker-less car can be acoustically trained to ensure that different parts of the interior transmit sound frequencies ideally suited to their properties.

The roof panel, for example, is claimed to be the perfect substitute for a subwoofer.

As well as weighing in up to 90 per cent lighter than a regular car's sound system, engineers claim their technique to create sound uses only a fraction of the electricity.

Continental also says its speaker-less system is also capable of providing a more natural 3D sound.

It's not known when the new tech will be phased in, but Continental claims it is still "several years away" from production.

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