Now if you live near a busy highway the possibility that one day the roads might be populated with cars that make no sound must seem like a dream come true but for people who rely their hearing to stay safe when they’re around any sort of roadway the lack of sound can be extremely dangerous.

Sight-impaired people are particularly at risk when there are quiet hybrids and electric vehicles around and so are those foolish people who don’t pay attention, talk on their mobile phones or are just otherwise distracted when they’re crossing a road and car makers understand that this is a problem that needs to be addressed.

It isn’t as simple as just installing some sort of warning system that might sound an external alarm when the car comes close to a pedestrian … after all you just want to let them know that there’s a car around rather than scaring them so much that they jump. So what do manufacturers do?

Well as you will see here the design team who are developing the Chevrolet Volt got together with some blind people to look at ways of producing a ‘friendly’ sound that would warn people that an otherwise quiet car was approaching.

In the Honda system the petrol engine is turning all the time but not actually supplying power all the time however it will cut in once the vehicle reaches around 45km/h. At speeds below 45km/h the Insight is running on battery power alone.

In the Toyota system the petrol engine is completely switched off and remains off if your around town at relatively low speeds and only cuts in if you accelerate hard or the battery becomes depleted.

The Chevy Volt also uses a system where the petrol engine remains switched off when the battery is charged but the petrol engine doesn’t switch on at any time unless the battery has become depleted.

Why does the Chevy Volt keep the petrol engine switched off while there’s some charge left in the battery? Simply because the electric motor provides 370 Nm of instant torque … in layman’s terms that’s more than enough torque to get a jump on everyone at the lights … and that means that it doesn’t need any help from the petrol engine.

To give you a better idea of how the system works on the Chevy Volt here’s a short video that will explain it very clearly.

Sadly neither of the big two seem interested in filling that gap anytime soon. Holden may have unveiled the Chevy Volt at the Sydney Motor Show last week but it’s still not set to arrive here in Australia till 2012 despite the fact that it was on display in America as long ago as January 2007. 

How long can they go on building cars in Australia that fewer and fewer people want to buy?

Newspapers in Japan are reporting that Toyota will have a new hybrid on the market by 2009. The new vehicle won’t be a replacement for the very successful Prius but will target the next level of engine capacity. It could even appear with a 3 litre motor.

While the Honda Civic hybrid (pictured) and the Toyota Prius – perhaps the best known hybrid in Australia – did not seem to attract much attention at the Brisbane Motor Show that could all change in the next few years.

A recent survey by KPMG of 140 automotive executives from around the world found that almost 90% of them felt that sales of hybrid cars were set to boom in the next five years.

What that means for the local Aussie manufacturers does not look good. No one has a hybrid on the horizon and the industry is still geared towards big vehicles that are less fuel-efficient than the market may want.