This. People always underestimate how much noise rolling resistance of tyres plays in the sound profile of traffic. Electric cars are worse under 50mph, basically because they're heavier.
The parent's point is that the engine isn't the largest contributor of noise. At low speeds the engine noise dominates, at "high" (meaning normal driving speeds) speeds the tire noise dominates.
Go listen to a highway and see
if you can hear the engines over the wooshing.
A bit of an aside on this. The last 30 years or so have been amazing for cutting down engine noise levels. In trying to squeeze out ever last drop of efficiency they have also reduced the noise levels.
Nowadays the only times I really notice them is either when idling or something from before the 90's is driving past.
This is the point that makes all of the miserable noise pollution from modified cars so much more grating, knowing that whatever is making excess noise means potentially useful (in a performance sense) power is escaping as sound somewhere in their drivetrain, so insofar as their objective is to make their vehicles loud for the sake of loud, these people are achieving the opposite of what they're trying to signal they're achieving.
Efficiency and power are not equivalent. All you need to do is look at the most powerful (hp per liter) cars and the exhaust systems they use for proof.
The people were talking about are slapping shitty cat deleted straight pipe exhausts on what are typically engineered to be economy or family cars, or small displacement motorcycle engines. People who don't see the offensively selfish stupidity in tripling or quadrupling the noise output of their mode of transportation just to get an extra 10% power, if that.
They're not running million dollar F1 cars around closed environments dedicated to the purpose.
Those are frequently Highways in name only. If people are doing 2-3 mph in stop and go traffic it might as well have stop lights. Thus the frequent use of bypasses so people on long trips can actually get someplace quickly even if the distance increases.
I don’t think this is something that occurs to people. When I jog, i noticed pre-AirPods pro that I could listen to podcasts fine on the side street blocks that i normally run on, but once I hit the avenue (more traffic and 30-40 speed), it’s hard for me to hear without noise cancellation.
In Europe at least, where most (?) transmissions are still manual, you will still get way more noise from an ICE vehicle than an electric vehicle at low speed. This is my experience everywhere here in cities, on small roads, etc. This is largely caused by the fact that people tend to not drive in an optimal manner (i.e. using a low gear instead of a higher one).
In residential and downtown areas, the sound is going to be dominated by engine idling, pulling away, and low speed cruising. It's ridiculous to argue that electric motors aren't a massive improvement in all of these cases.
Maybe inside of a regular electric car, but the worst noise pollution in cities comes from cars and motorcycles with modified exhaust and incessant honking. Cars are loud and that's a problem by itself, but a car with a bad driver is exponentially worse than one with a normal driver.
That’s one part, but the other massive part is noise from freeways and the baseline white noise from faster roads, where most of the noise comes from tires. EVs are not better (and typically worse since they’re heavier) — the only way to fix it is 1. No freeways in city centers. 2. Fewer cars. 3. Noise barriers. 4. Asphalt that reduces tire noise (uncommon in North American cities, where concrete is used to improve the lifespan).
I can’t use my balcony in a downtown city center because the baseline tire noise from the highway is so loud, and that’s without the obnoxious exhaust
