I'm torn with the noise situation with EVs. On one hand, I obviously recognize the importance of pedestrians being made aware of nearby automobiles, especially those with vision impairment. But on the other hand, I feel that automobiles making constant loud noise is an antipattern. The reason that cars have always made constant loud noise isn't to notify pedestrians—it's because gasoline engines produce a lot of waste noise.

If in a parallel universe the first mass adopted automobiles operated silently, I don't think we would or should have eschewed them or put constant noise-makers on them. I suspect we would have done the same thing we actually did do, even in our world of gasoline automobiles: put a user-activated noise-maker on them and expect and require operators to use that device when appropriate.