Comment by Mawr
5 days ago
Yeah, but you probably don't walk along a highway every day to get your groceries, do you. The closer the traffic gets to where people live, the lower the speed limit, and the more relevant the loudness of an engine.
Another factor is that an EV has a noise ceiling, whereas an ICE can get arbitrarily loud — think motorcycles, buses, trucks.
ICEs also use all of their noise range all the time — revving, accelerating. Sudden harsh noise changes like that are much more noticeable and annoying than the sound of a theoretical steady-state ICE engine.
Unfortunately the steady background noise of cars I do hear around my house (and thus where I get groceries) mostly comes from the highway. But you're right, in the city centre it's partially this quiet because it's about the farthest you can get from the highway.