It was only after owning a Tesla that I realized how much of the noise from a car comes from its engine, and not the tires. I'd ballpark around 80%, especially at city speeds (less than 50 km/h).
Before you convince yourself that you are doing the world a favor by driving a “quiet” car you should probably watch the video where he explicitly debunks this.
Could you link this video? My experience has been that electric vehicles are significantly quieter than ice vehicles.
Edit: Are you referring to this video? He mentions electric cars being too quiet at low speeds and reasonably noisy at high speeds. I would imagine that speeds inside a city should be low, no?
In his small scale test (which I admit is far from perfect at isolating sources of sound), he shows that both ICE and electric cars are both way louder than bikes. And both types of cars still have extremely loud horns. His thesis is that high background noise of cities makes people agitated and make cities uncomfortable places to live. So, yes, while electric cars do have no engine noise they still contribute massively to noise pollution and that awful constant hum of tires that engulf cities.
I’m talking about my own experience comparing an electric car and a gasoline car at low speeds. EVs being significantly quieter is already well established and we have laws for EVs to make extra noise to alert pedestrians.
