Probably a heathenous take around here; but if an electric car can't sound like it's got a beast under its hood, I don't want to think about the noise a car is making. If you can't be muscle, be silent is my take on electric cars; I grew up on motor shows and drag strips. Electric whine just don't sound right.
All cars are a menace from any perspective but that of the car.
The only time electric cars make too little noise to hear is when they are driving at speeds that aren't guaranteed to kill you. After about 30mph/50kph, the vast majority of sound comes from the tires unless you drive one of those horrendously loud trucks or motorcycles.
Muscle cars are cool at car shows, but not passing through neighborhoods or areas where people are trying to enjoy talking outdoors.
White noise at an audible level is a significant improvement over the noise pollution of ICE vehicles (though small commuter cars do tend to be relatively quiet)
EV "whine" that you can hear inside the vehicle is a factor of three things: pedestrian safety sounds, tire noise, and wind noise. The only street legal EVs in North America that have substantial whine are Koenigsegg hypercars with straight cut gears, not commuter vehicles.
In some cars, you can hear inverter noise under full 100% acceleration from low speeds, but most people aren't doing drag strip launches in the day to day unless they're obnoxious Tesla dudes.
I think Toyota's working on something like that for a concept EV they've got coming? Think it was an ArsTechnica dude who wrote on it but apparently, it's got a completely ersatz manual transmission that still tacks that feel of a traditional engine to the lessened runoff of an EV; and honestly? More EV manufacturers need to glom onto this.
Should be automatically muted when you're in dense/city areas with a lot of traffic though tbh. I usually wear headphones and listen to shit on my walking commute, but whenever I forget them or they're dead the sound of cars around me is just mad unpeaceful
Well they did change it to post but every good instance patches it back to toot because it's a toot. Iirc it was hbomb who joked and caused it to be that in return for joining the patreon lol.