Electric cars were supposed to be less noisy than internal combustion engines. In fact, they are so quiet that manufacturers have to add “pedestrian warning sounds” to make sure pedestrians can hear cars and make way for them. However I can hear them when sitting in my apartment with the windows open. Or when I’m just walking around in the city. In the end, I find some of them more noisy and annoying than internal combustion engines when they are moving at low speed.
So far the most noisy electric cars to me are Hyundai and Chevrolet.
I know they are just complying with safety regulations in their own way. After all, people can’t drive a two ton lethal silent vehicle at speed in compact and dense urban environments without at least making some sort of alien spaceship noise, for safety. But it’s making some electric cars annoying to me. So in the not so distant future, living in a city will sound like this?!
So, aside from those two, what are the other brands that are making their electric cars more noisy and annoying than cars with internal combustion engines?
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The entire “electric cars wills be quiet” is just a lie and/or misconception of what traffic noise is. If you live relatively near any street with a speed limit above 30 km/h, as most people do, you’ll notice very little noise difference with 100 % electric cars and trucks imo. The noise comes from the road surface, the tires, the friction in general. An electric car at 50 km/h to me is louder than a new train at 150 km/h. Asphalt or concrete + rubber = noise at speed.
Nice theory brah, but EVs have different tires designed for lower rolling resistance and less noise.
Source?
that’s a sales pitch, not a source.
go outside? i promise you’ll hear a difference
Toyotas, specifically their hybrids, are the noisiest cars around. And only at parking lot speeds. Yes, this is intentional, but it’s REALLY annoying.
Because idiots walk into live traffic without looking.
If an electric car can be programmed to sound like the Jetsons flying cars then I will buy one tomorrow.
just put a bespoke cassette in the am/fm/cassette deck and turn up the speakers
I know Teslas do that, just don’t buy a new one i guess
Don’t buy any car that requires a subscription to keep it working right.
Any ones of them going fast.
This is the truth. It isn’t the fake scifi noises you should be annoyed with, any car going faster than 30-50km/h will sound exactly the same due to road noise from the tires.
“which electric cars are the noisiest”
“All cars are noisy if they’re going fast enough”
Lol ok, but not what we’re talking about.
Lemmy threads are full of people with opinions on automotive technology who are clueless.
It’s also incorrect, do they think that the engine just makes zero noise at higher rpms? And that electric vehicles using low resistance tires also has zero effect?
Above about 30 km/h you don’t hear the engines from traffic, but just the general “woosh” traffic noise. EV or ICE doesn’t matter much in that regard. Exception being obnoxiously loudly ‘tuned’ engines, but those should just consequently be confiscated imo, especially if driven at night, while that is on purpose disturbing thousands of people’s rest, it’s sociopath behaviour
That is wrong. EV tires are different to reduce noise, EVs have lower air drag, also to reduce noise. The phenomenon engineers have addressed is called tire roar, it is minimal in EVs because of tread design and an inner foam liner.
So I looked into it a tiny bit, and I am not surprised. These tires can reduce noise a bit indeed: mainly FOR THE PEOPLE INSIDE THE CAR because those notice it more now where they used to not notice it much because of their own engine being louder in the cabin.
Even if newer tires end up making it relatively more silent than older tires, the heavier vehicles (ever larger SUV’s + very heavy battery) will probably mean it’s a zero sum game compared to the old cars and tires. There is no magic tire eliminating the rubber-road surface noise. Cars on roads are noisy, the only thing effectively keeping the noise down is speed reduction in cities or building expensive tunnels.
Sources?
Why would air drag be lower? Big SUV cube = big SUV cube. The only difference is lack of air intake grill in front.
There are roads “near” me (750m - 1500 m) away with speed limits 80-120 km/h. That’s already pretty damn far away compared to many other buildings in average cities, and there’s lots of stuff in between me and the roads, like other buildings, parks, sound shield barriers next to the road, et cetera. Yet, when the wind is coming from that direction, it is very very loud, especially at night. Even at such far distance and it not being just open plains between the roads and me… I find it quite hard to believe there would suddenly be new fancy tires that reduces this noise, and mainly: why wouldn’t the same tires be used on internal combustion cars then? There’s also the “whisper” asphalt. Yeah, it means a dB or two less, but it sure as hell ain’t fixing the problem completely for me.
I live right on the corner of a 50km/h collector street and the noise is terribly distracting. Not counting any of the souped up racing bikes or modded straight piped track cars that zip past, from my back yard you can hear the road noise from the traffic coming well before it actually arrives.
I’m confused, are we on the same side or not? Cars are cars, just because they have a battery doesn’t make them any better for us. A Toyota RAV4 makes the same amount of road noise as a Hyundai Ioniq 9
That’s wrong. Several people have blurted this and it’s wrong.
EVs have different tires, they have less rolling resistance and a foam liner to absorb sound, because otherwise all the driver would hear is tire noise.
https://www.michelinman.com/auto/auto-tips-and-advice/electric-mobility-guide/quiet-and-comfortable
EVs also have lower air drag, which makes less noise.
By far, the most noise on roadways is from chunky tread brodozers and 18 wheelers.
OK but it’s up to the owner to decide on what tires they want on their car. These same quiet tires can be put onto an ICE car, and the same cheap and loud all seasons you get at the corner tire shop can go on an EV. I live in a winter city and you better believe if I owned an EV it would be wearing studded tires which are obnoxiously loud regardless of the engine.
Can’t we agree that cars are loud and it would be better to get them out of our cities so we can walk and bike in peace?
Yes but I’m not living near an expressway (anymore). Most people also don’t. AFAIK most people living in an urban environment will be near a low speed street. So as mentioned, I’m in my apartment with the windows open and can now hear the the noises of electric cars’ pedestrian warning systems when they pass in front. Or I’m walking along a slow street to go to the grocery and of all the cars on that street, only the electric one can be heard. Even when I have my headphones on.
Sure, electric cars are as noisy as cars with internal combustion engines at high speed. But what I’m specifically concerned about is how much more noisy those things make in an urban environment when at low speed.
Electric car advocates are often saying those are much quieter than cars with internal combustion engines, and that it’s a positive. That electric cars will make our urban environments much more relaxed and quiet. However, because of all those pedestrian warning systems making different types of noises at different volumes and frequencies, they often end up noisier than cars burning gas.
I suspect it’s less about the intensity and more about frequency. Some cut through the background noise of city traffic more effectively. ICE cars (without performance enhancement exhausts) are pretty low frequency but that sound propagates further, I think.
Toyota hybrids are noisy for me.
Yes, low frequency sounds resonate further, which is why they use mid-high pitch on the EVs… it makes noise locally, but doesn’t translate as far. Important for vision impaired to be able to determine the locality of the sound.
Zeekr 001. Bane of my existence. They have the most annoying pedestrian alert noise on the fucking planet, I swear someone came up with it after reverse engineering a torture device.
I never had the displeasure to hear one yet. But as my country just opened up to Chinese electric cars, I guess it won’t be long before there’s one more annoying sound in our urban environment.
Not a single other chinese (or chinese-built) EV I’ve heard compares to that thing. Which is a shame bc the form factor is pretty cool, as is the battery/range
edit: on the flip side, Nissan (i think) have a really nice tone
It’s such baloney. ICE vehicles are allowed to make as little noise as they want, but electric vehicles have to purposefully make noise cause they’re too quiet? Rolls Royce don’t make noise, why don’t they need a noise maker.
People were getting struck by EVs. They only generate sounds at low speed. I have had people walk in front of my hybrid while in EV mode in parking lots, many people because they are all brain surgeons getting critical patient data they need to see walking to their cars.
Perhaps a more important question is why do EVs not have the option to make their pedestrian awareness sound like a jetson’s car?
The lame answer is that there are specific legal requirements around what sound they have to make.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-571/subpart-B/section-571.141
Obviously, thats in the US, but i bet other regulatory agencies have similar.
I only skimmed it, but it sounds like a jetsons sound is allowed.
They generate sounds that can be detected as directional by humans. It’s not a random noise.
Can we just do with standardized soft beeps on reverse or something?
Yes, better no card at all but that won’t happen and we sometimes may actually need a car
For those moments, I want things standardized and tooled for humans
