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Nissan Overview
Nissan was born in Japan, and like other marques from its homeland, the brand is known for crafting vehicles that place an emphasis on edgy styling and performance. The company's lineup of vehicles is broad, and includes sporty coupes, family sedans, minivans, trucks and SUVs.
In 1999, Nissan entered an alliance with Renault S.A. of France, which owns 44.4% of Nissan as of 2008. Nissan is among the top three Asian (also known as the Japanese Big 3 Automakers) rivals of the "Big Three" in the U.S. Currently it is the third largest Japanese car accessories manufacturer. The Nissan VQ engines, of V6 configuration, have featured among Ward's 10 Best Engines for 14 straight years, since the award's inception.
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An engineer for many years concerned with suppressing the sounds Nissan's vehicles make, Tabata is now leading the team that's crafting the artificial sounds Nissan's future electric cars will make. The team decided that trying to recreate the sound of an internal combustion engine was crazy, despite Nissan's management steering them in this direction. I say hats-off to Tabata for making this very bold decision: "We decided that if we're going to do this, if we have to make sound, then we're going to make it beautiful and futuristic. Instead of looking to the past of the automotive industry--not particularly identified with the making of beautiful sounds (though a Ferrari's purr is close)--Tabata looked to film scores, since the artists involved here were trying to craft attractive sounds. Eventually Tabata's team succeeded in producing a sound "closer to the world of art" and settled on high-pitched sounds not too dissimilar to the noises made by the flying Spinner cars in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. Electric cars that use 100% electric motive power generate very little noise of their own--which is a good thing, as noise constitutes wasted energy.