here in Paris the 150cc scooters are much worse. Very high RPM and incredible noise

Good news, electric scooters are a thing, and they're very quiet.

I wouldn't say they're a thing yet; there are some nice 'luxury' electric scooters, and there are cheap lead-acid scooters, but not too much in between yet.

I'd love an affordable, reasonably well-constructed LiIon scooter, but it's not there. Definitely coming, but not here yet.

Seems to be coming a few now. At least locally there's several li-ion options in the 2k-3k USD range, most with 30-40km range. Quite affordable here for most.

e.g. late night pizza delivery wakes up the neighbourhood

100%. A garbage truck and a tiny pothole are magnitudes louder than any consumer vehicle. Repaving the roads would have a much larger effect on noise than replacing every ICE vehicle with a tesla.

I'm not in public policy or anything, but it's kind of baffling that no one is targeting fleet vehicles as the obvious first target for cleaning up. Trying to convince consumers of the value of electric vehicles is hard. Trying to convince a guy who is paying maintenance and fuel costs for 4,000 vehicles should be a piece of cake. Especially if you just force them through legislation. Mayor De Blasio could mandate all livery vehicles be electric by 2030 and that's an instant captive market of over 100K vehicles.

Don't forget the diesel soot. Leave your window open for the day and come back to suit covering everything.

Modern ICE cars are shut off at stops. No battery required.

Not to be pedantic, but modern ICE cars still have batteries...

They aren't hybrids with their attendant motive power battery.

I noticed certain builds of the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 offer an electric motor assist that also includes idle engine shutoff. We can only hope that is becomes a standard feature, electric motors in traffic jams would be wonderful.

http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/gm-engines/l8b/