I think what EVs really need is a pedestrian horn - a much softer and friendlier horn than the vehicle horn. In the LEAF, on the occasions when pedestrians don’t hear me approaching despite the PFAWS, honking the horn sounds really aggressive and intimidatory. A nice cow-bell (or other downloadable sound) would be much better!
When I was talking about migraine, it was for the people outside of the car, yeah they'll hear it, but its the loudest and obnoxious noise and that's just on ONE car. Imagine 15 cars making the exact same noise while accelerating. Also in some countries, lawmakers are thinking of having it been heard INSIDE the car but I can't find anything on that, only from a few forum posts.
Also,
There's a lot more than just car noise in a city. People talking, crossing beeps, footsteps, trains going over bridges, trams dinging and hell, even massively loud cars trying to show off they are morons for some reason you'd easily miss all of the newer ICE just as the same with noise from EVs.
Considering that we have people wearing headphones while crossing the road oblivious to anything paying zero attention. And that people are now getting noise-cancelling headphones and even god-forbid noise-cancelling airpods nows. It just exacerbates the problem.
Considering that some people wearing headphones are missing train horns somehow, I doubt an even quieter horn will get their attention. Again, I believe the best solution to this problem is having good automatic braking with a predictive system.
We should stop trying to take the easiest solution and actually use some of the insane technological capabilities that we have.