I have a Zoe, the noise is soft and stops above 30 km/h. I can turn it off with a switch if I want to. I've already noticed people being surprised when I pass them without the noise, so I keep it activated.
I believe under the EU rules, sound is only emitted up to 20km/h (12 mph).
Doesn't that make it pretty pointless then? Collisions below that speed are almost never fatal even for pedestrians.
I feel like it may actually be better for inattentive drivers to hit something at those kinds of speeds and jar them into being more careful in the future (and have their insurance rightfully dinged) than to have their first experience of their not paying attention causing them to hit something occur at a higher speed.
But it does happen at even moderately higher speeds. Isn't that the argument used to justify all of those traffic calming measures? Make people feel less safe so they act more safe? Doing this is exactly the opposite of that, so either one of them is wrong or the other is.
Friend has a Zoe and it makes perfect sense. When driving slow, like in a parking lot its amazing how futuristic it seems when he disables the "noise" - it's totally silent, very dangerous. So I think this is a good directive.