Kia figured out what kind of music to listen to to increase the range of an electric car

The Korean company Kia conducted an interesting study demonstrating the importance of choosing music while driving. As it turns out, music can extend or shorten the range of an electric car.

For the experiment, a Kia EV6 GT-Line S equipped with a 14-speaker Meridian Audio audio system was used. A number of participants with no previous experience driving electric vehicles drove the EV6 on a 29-kilometer route typical of everyday use, combining busy city roads, secondary roads, open sections and winding country roads.

They all listened to a pre-composed playlist at the same volume level with fixed sound settings, while a medical-grade Empatica E4 wearable device recorded their biometric parameters.

The playlist includes the following songs: Tycho – Awake, Adele – Hello, The Weeknd – Blinding Lights, Anna Meredith – Nautilus, Kanye West – Fade and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

The results showed that participants drove four times more economically while listening to Beethoven compared to some other tracks. The fast-paced hit song The Weeknd made driving half as economical by encouraging the driver to step on the gas, draining the battery faster. At the same time, Adele’s ballad showed average results, provoking an “emotional driving style.”

The study was led by Dr. Duncan Williams, Lecturer in the School of Science, Engineering and the Environment at the University of Salford and an expert in acoustics, noise, psychoacoustics and sound science. He summed up:

In short: if you want to go further, listen to Beethoven and other relaxing classical music. If you’re not worried about running out of battery faster, play faster tracks.”