There is no reason to be skeptical of this claim. ICEs are very noisy during acceleration. City traffic is very start-stop by its nature. Even in Dutch cities,

There is no reason to be skeptical of this claim. ICEs are very noisy during acceleration. City traffic is very start-stop by its nature. Even in Dutch cities, even if you replace every single traffic light with a roundabout. EV engines are incredibly quiet when you put them next to each other. In many cases, we're just very used to it especially because it's a "low rumbling" kind of noise. But it still affects us.