We have had several posts here claiming that the pedestrian warning sound of the ID4 is loud, and I agree. So I broke out my trusty sound pressure meter and took a quick reading as my wife was backing out of the garage. We didn't reach the loudest level I have ever heard from the car (I think), and the reading was 71 dB A weighted. I doubt that the weighting matters since the frequencies in the sound file all seem to fall into the middle range, but there you are for completeness.
As a reference, EU regulations require the AVAS sounds to be between 56 dB and 75 dB. The NHTSA rule in the US is much fuzzier and simply states that the sound must be clearly heard above ambient sounds. The US rule, however, has requirements like having two or four frequencies, and how those should be spaced, and the hard requirement that new cars must emit a sound was pushed out several times but is now in effect.
If you are not familiar with the dB (decibel) scale for sound pressure, it is logarithmic. For every 6 dB increase the apparent loudness doubles. 56 dB as the low threshold in the EU is about as loud as a refrigerator, 60-70 dB is about as loud as a business office, and 75 dB is as loud as a vacuum cleaner.
Given all of the above, I think VW made the sound reach the upper permissible level in the EU, i.e. significantly louder (~3-4 times louder) than required, and in my opinion much louder than necessary. I can hear our car approaching out on the street through a closed double-pane window. For comparison, the Prius whine we all know is maybe half as loud. Teslas still come with the sound off as far as I am aware. We have one friend who turned hers on and made it loud, it is slightly lower than our ID4. I heard another Tesla MY back out of a parking lot the other day, and its sound was very soft but distinctive. It only sounded in reverse, when they drove forward and away there was nothing.
I would like to put a 10 dB pad on my noise speakers, which would make the sound loudness about right. The way VW varies pitch and sound level as we accelerate is actually perfect, it gives me a great sense of what is going on without looking (frequent cyclist/pedestrian speaking here, with lots of bad experiences).
I am curious what other forum members think?
As a reference, EU regulations require the AVAS sounds to be between 56 dB and 75 dB. The NHTSA rule in the US is much fuzzier and simply states that the sound must be clearly heard above ambient sounds. The US rule, however, has requirements like having two or four frequencies, and how those should be spaced, and the hard requirement that new cars must emit a sound was pushed out several times but is now in effect.
If you are not familiar with the dB (decibel) scale for sound pressure, it is logarithmic. For every 6 dB increase the apparent loudness doubles. 56 dB as the low threshold in the EU is about as loud as a refrigerator, 60-70 dB is about as loud as a business office, and 75 dB is as loud as a vacuum cleaner.
Given all of the above, I think VW made the sound reach the upper permissible level in the EU, i.e. significantly louder (~3-4 times louder) than required, and in my opinion much louder than necessary. I can hear our car approaching out on the street through a closed double-pane window. For comparison, the Prius whine we all know is maybe half as loud. Teslas still come with the sound off as far as I am aware. We have one friend who turned hers on and made it loud, it is slightly lower than our ID4. I heard another Tesla MY back out of a parking lot the other day, and its sound was very soft but distinctive. It only sounded in reverse, when they drove forward and away there was nothing.
I would like to put a 10 dB pad on my noise speakers, which would make the sound loudness about right. The way VW varies pitch and sound level as we accelerate is actually perfect, it gives me a great sense of what is going on without looking (frequent cyclist/pedestrian speaking here, with lots of bad experiences).
I am curious what other forum members think?
