The Toyota Prius all-electric car has seen much success since its launch but it seems there’s one problem. It’s too quiet. What I mean by that is that apparently many pedestrians have come rather too close to putting themselves in danger when a Prius is around, simply because they don’t hear the vehicle coming.

News comes today that the giant car manufacturer is now being ultra-cautious after concerns from both consumers and the government, and is to begin issuing Prius models with an optional noisemaker speaker, according to Mark Leevan over on Examiner.com, sourced from PhysOrg.

The tricky part will be to emit a noise loud enough for people to hear, without being obtrusive and the other thing to consider is that there’ll be a price to pay, 12,600 yen (US $150) in fact, so it remains to be seen whether drivers will choose to put their hands in their pockets. We’ll soon find out as the scheme kicks off in Japan on August 30.

For more on this go to examiner.com. It will be interesting to see how many people are willing to pay for this optional extra and we’d like to know if you’d consider having a noisemaker speaker fitted if you’re a Prius owner? Let us know please by posting a comment.

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