You don't understand - its not triggered by the presence of pedestrians. Its a constant noise the car makes while moving at low speed.
If there's many EVs in your town you probably will have been hearing these sounds out and about. They're not as intrusive as it seems from that video.
EU rules say that EVs have to make a noise when moving under 20kmh because they are so quiet (above that speed tyre noise comes into play so they are less quiet)
People are already getting lazy and crossing streets only looking when they have already started to cross or sometimes not at all. Emitting no sound at all sounds like a terrible idea.
Not where I live, but then again, here we have lots of very quiet vehicles (bikes, e-bikes, s-pedelecs and e-scooters).
In a city like Amsterdam such an alarm would be going off all the time adding significantly to the noise pollution, one of the advantages of electric cars is that they are quiet and this to some extent negates that.
If you are worried enough about a pedestrian that you want to make a sound to alert them to your presence then between the emission of the sound, it traveling to the pedestrian and their reaction precious time is lost. That's why I think applying the brakes to the point where everybody is kept safe is a better strategy. It also takes care of the assumption that the pedestrian will respond to the sound, especially if such sounds are not standardized between brands (engines are all recognizable as engines).
That doesn't make any sense at all then. Cars should sound like cars if you want to elicit the kind of response that a car would get in traffic, and should - if you want to go this way anyway - be as loud as a car is so that people will accurate judge its distance.
It's higher in tone so it's easier to localize, and the unique sound draws more attention. Any time an electric car passed me by with the whizzing sound, it just sounded like it was at the correct volume level for the application. It's definitely more pleasing than good old diesel rumble or some hot shot with the popping exhaust.
Don't come to Amsterdam. The number of utterly silent and still quite heavy vehicles on the streets there is very large, you probably won't get across from central station to dam square without being hit. A 5 minute walk.
They shouldn't look when walking over a pedestrian crossing, it's the cars that need to be aware of people. Still, sound is a good idea. Teslas have one when they are on reverse too.
