Abstract
This report presents findings based on a measurement campaign on individual noise emission levels of vehicles in traffic across six different sites. The primary objective of this analysis was to compare the noise emission levels of electric vehicles (EV) with those of internal combustion engines (ICE). At locations, where the average speed was below 50 km/h, the electric vehicles were found to be 0.5 to 1.5 dB more silent than diesel cars. The difference between electric and petrol/hybrid vehicles was negligible. The EVs have higher net vehicle weight and wider tyres than most ICE vehicles. A multiregression analysis revealed that noise levels increase with increasing weight and increasing width of tyres. However, this analysis also showed a reduction of pass-by levels of approximately 0.5 dB over a 10-year period. This is probably due to a combination of reduced engine noise from ICE vehicles and the introduction of EVs.