The EVs/hybrids I've encountered in the US seem to have artificial sound as well when no ICE is running, including the Prius.
They turn off over ~18MPH, though. After that, tire noise is much louder. As loud as an ICE car.
So, realistically, you’d hear a Prius if it’s going normal road speeds.
Side note: I wish the sound was more pleasant. When multiple cars are moving in a lot I call it the “choir of the damned”. They’re also louder than ICE cars and that’s kinda lame, we moved backwards WRT noise.
Are you saying the typical EVs you hear are _louder_ than ICE cars where you live?
As to the pleasantness of the noise - yeah, that seems to be a manufacturer's choice, or perhaps even driver choice? And let's hope just like annoying ring-tones of years past that the current selection dies out soon...
Some have figured out how to disable it completely (just pulling the noisemaker causes a fault code to trigger) but quieting it down to roughly the volume of an ICE seems more reasonable to me.
Irrespective of the volume it is remarkable why any car designer thought that this was the right _kind_ of noise for the car to emit. Somebody chose that soundtrack, and you kind of have to wonder why...
ICE cars are pretty quiet where I live. Either that or there is so much ambient noise that I've lost some of my hearing but either way I don't hear much of an engine noise with recent cars.
I don't know the people driving these cars well; perhaps they modded them (seems unlikely, given the neighborhood), or perhaps they're old enough to have escaped new requirements; regardless - they're too quiet here in my sample size of 1 neighborhood in NL.