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?
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 get the impression it’s a personal thing. Some people (like you or me) are strongly ill affected by this kind of noise, other people don’t mind and some even say it’s ‘soothing’ to fall asleep to… Very hard to reason about this with people who can’t put in the effort to try to put themselves in the shoes of people with sensitive hearing. Noise pollution can affect my sleep quality and quantity very strongly, and with sleeping worse come many other issues. And sleep deprivation is a very real health hazard. Of course we don’t live in a fairytale world where there can be 0 cars, but especially in cities, also small ones, the speed limits should be 30 km/h, just for noise reduction. Safer traffic is just an extra benefit.