We require noisy EVs for safety, but let’s stop the real killers: SUVs & gas
Much has been made of the supposed danger to pedestrians from quiet electric cars, to the point where the government now requires noisemakers on each EV model. But if we really want to save pedestrians, and everyone else, we need to target the actual culprits: big, pedestrian-killing SUVs and trucks, and the associated pollution they create.
The noisemaker rule has finally gone into effect, after being tweaked and pushed back over the course of several years. This has resulted in noisier EVs, each with its own noise (some worse than others), in the name of pedestrian safety.
NHTSA’s rule was based on a DOT analysis that showed hybrid vehicles to be 17% more likely to be involved in a pedestrian crash, when accounting for situational factors and vehicle age, though this analysis only included hybrid vehicles up through the 2011 model year. The law mandating the DOT to study and propose a rule for this dates back to 2010, when only a handful of electric cars were on the road in the US.
When implementing the noisemaker rule, NHTSA estimated these noisemakers will save 32 lives over the lifecycle of a single model year’s fleet. The rule requires noisemakers for EVs and hybrids when operating under 19 mph, the safest speeds for pedestrians. It does not require noisemakers or minimum decibel levels for gas-powered vehicles, even if those vehicles are equipped with engine stop/start or other technologies, which make the engine quieter or silent in certain situations, e.g., when slowing down and approaching an intersection, a place pedestrians are likely to be.
And as of February of this year, NHTSA has even opened an investigation into whether every electric vehicle since 1997 should be retrofitted, at some cost and difficulty, in order to comply retroactively with the noisemaker rule, in a way that virtually no other vehicle regulation has ever been implemented. The petition itself acknowledges there is no data yet showing relative danger from EVs that are not equipped with noisemakers.
What’s really deadly to pedestrians? SUVs
But there’s another common vehicle type that is 45% more likely to kill pedestrians: “light trucks,” a classification that includes SUVs and pickup trucks. Though “light” might be an odd word to apply, given that today’s SUVs are as large as literal tanks.
Light trucks are more deadly to pedestrians because they are larger and have higher hoods, resulting in decreased pedestrian visibility for drivers (with pedestrians obscured behind hoods, or behind other vehicles that are taller than the pedestrians or cyclists on the other side of them) and more deadly pedestrian impacts.
Cars are required to have bumpers designed for pedestrian safety, but light trucks have a different set of requirements. This leads to light trucks impacting pedestrians higher on the body, which causes more injury to the torso and head than the legs, resulting in deadlier collisions when a light truck is involved.
So not only are they more likely to hit pedestrians, but more deadly when they do.
And in fact, pedestrian death rates have skyrocketed in the US recently, up around 50% in the last decade, reaching the highest point in 40 years. Not coincidentally, SUV sales rates have increased in the same time frame. More deadly vehicles on the road have resulted in more pedestrian death, with the growth in SUVs responsible for killing at least a thousand pedestrians as of 2019 – which is a lot more than 32. Pedestrian deaths continued to rise sharply after 2019, so that number is surely significantly higher now.
The rise of SUVs is not solely a matter of consumer preference. Automakers use light truck exemptions to get out of emissions and safety rules and make more money, and actively push consumers toward these vehicles (even though barely anyone uses them for their intended purpose). How can Americans buy wagons, or city cars, or hatchbacks, when everything on the dealer lot is an SUV?
But running over people isn’t the only way that SUVs are dangerous; the pollution they make is orders of magnitude worse.
Noise itself is deadly
The DOT’s analysis of EV pedestrian safety explicitly did not consider environmental noise as a confounding factor to its research.
In a world choked with noise pollution from combustion engine vehicles, it stands to reason that quieter vehicles would be harder to hear. But if the world were not choked with noise pollution, those quieter vehicles would no longer be too quiet, they would be the norm. In a quieter world, EVs aren’t “harder to hear” once the sounds they make are no longer masked by the pathetic belching of combustion engines. Lower noise levels is a benefit of EVs, not a downside.
Noise itself is incredibly deadly to pedestrians – or rather, to everyone. Noise, mostly from cars but also from other combustion engines (airplanes, small off-road engines, etc.), greatly increases the rate of heart attacks in noisy areas, negatively affects the health of hundreds of millions of Americans, and is responsible for 12,000 premature deaths per year across Europe. Some research shows noise pollution to be just about as deadly as vehicle crashes overall.
The government even knows this to be the case, and has for some time, as it established the Office of Noise Abatement and Control through Congressional acts in the 1970s. This office was intended to study and regulate environmental noise in the US, but was – in a phrase that should be common to people who study social ills – defunded by Reagan in the ’80s.
So since noise is deadly, and since noise itself contributes to the problem the NHTSA wants to solve (by making it harder to hear quieter cars), then why don’t we work on making less noise instead of more?
And then, there’s air pollution
And finally, air pollution is deadlier than all of the above. And air pollution overwhelmingly comes from combustion engines.
Outdoor air pollution kills over 4 million people globally per year (including 100-200K in the US) and shortens global lifespans by two years. The health and environmental costs of fossil fuels add up to $5.3 trillion globally per year.
Much of this pollution and fossil fuel use comes from gasoline-powered vehicles, with larger vehicles like SUVs consuming more fuel and emitting more pollution than smaller vehicles (and tremendously more than zero-emission EVs). Vehicle pollution results in 4 million new cases of childhood asthma per year, sentencing these children to a lifetime of health issues.
Which brings up the point that this pollution is often not killing the people who emit it. Not only are children harmed for a lifetime by this despite not having contributed to this pollution, but environmental damage is disproportionately felt by the poor and is disproportionately emitted by the affluent.
This disparity was recently pointed out by the LA Times, in an article which Tesla CEO Elon Musk criticized despite his company being one of the solutions to this problem (perhaps someone could remind him that he’s still CEO of Tesla?). We already have studies showing that more EVs means cleaner air (with each EV bringing ~$10K in societal health benefits), and we know that more gas cars means dirtier air – and more deaths.
So if you want to reduce deaths, I’ve got a proposal
We know that:
- Big cars kill more pedestrians by running them over.
- Noisy cars kill more people by increasing stress, and also cover up the noises made by cars that operate at a more appropriate volume.
- Big, noisy combustion engines kill a whole lot of people by choking them to death with pollution.
Which means these noisemakers aren’t the most effective solution to the problem they are meant to solve. More effective solutions involve doing something about noise, and about air pollution, and about big pedestrian-murdering vehicles.
This also means that EVs aren’t the only answer. While a Hummer EV, the least-efficient EV, uses about as much energy as a Toyota Prius, one of the most-efficient gas-powered vehicles, the Hummer EV also takes up more space and causes more pedestrian danger. The trend toward SUVs threatens to eliminate emissions reductions from electrification, and while electric SUVs are still vastly efficient than any gas car, they are less efficient than smaller electric cars.
If we truly want to make the world safer for pedestrians, there are a lot of things that we can do outside of noisemakers. A discordant symphony of clown-car sound effects at every intersection isn’t going to be the big change that makes the world more walkable or cyclable.
To do that, we should put cars (or transit) on the road that don’t hog as much space, that don’t obscure pedestrians and cyclists from the view of other drivers, that don’t make the world too loud to think straight, that don’t choke everyone with stinky exhaust. These steps will give people more confidence to use their legs to make use of these more efficient, healthier, cheaper transportation methods – once these myriad benefits are no longer overshadowed by the problem of huge land yachts increasingly trying to murder them.
So here’s a modest proposal for society: If every EV needs a noisemaker for the safety gains mentioned above, then we should also take every “light truck” off the road for even more safety. If we’re thinking about making the EV rule retroactive to 1997, then we can make the much more effective SUV rule retroactive to 1997 as well. Do the latter, and you can have the former.
And if you won’t, then it’s not really about safety, is it?
Featured photo by Charles Edward Miller
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Environment
India’s inflation rises to 0.71% in November as decline in food, fuel prices loses steam
EV and battery supply chain research specialists Benchmark Mineral Intelligence reports that 2.0 million electric vehicles were sold globally in November 2025, bringing global EV sales to 18.5 million units year-to-date. That’s a 21% increase compared to the same period in 2024.
Europe was the clear growth leader in November, while North America continued to lag following the expiration of US EV tax credits. China, meanwhile, remains the world’s largest EV market by a wide margin.
Europe leads global growth
Europe’s EV market jumped 36% year-over-year in November 2025, with BEV sales up 35% and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) sales rising 39%. That brings Europe’s total EV sales to 3.8 million units for the year so far, up 33% compared to January–November 2024.
France finally returned to year-to-date growth in November, edging up 1% after spending most of 2025 in the red following earlier subsidy cuts. The rebound was led by OEMs such as the Volkswagen Group and Renault, a wider selection of EV models, and France’s “leasing social” program, aimed at helping lower-income households switch to EVs.
Italy also posted a standout month, logging record EV sales of just under 25,000 units in November. The surge followed the launch of a new incentive program designed to replace older ICE vehicles. The program earmarks €597.3 million (about $700 million) in funding for the replacement of around 39,000 gas cars.
The UK expanded access to its full £3,750 ($4,400) EV subsidy by adding five more eligible models: the Nissan Leaf (built in Sunderland, with deliveries starting in early 2026), the MINI Countryman, Renault 4, Renault 5, and Alpine A290.
US market slows after federal tax credit’s premature death
In North America, EV sales in the US did tick up month-over-month in November, following a sharp October drop after federal tax credits expired on September 30, 2025. Brands including Kia (up 30%), Hyundai (up 20%), Honda (up 11%), and Subaru (232 Solterra sales versus just 13 the month before) all saw gains, but overall volumes remain below levels when the federal tax credit was still available.
Policy changes aren’t helping. In early December, Trump formally “reset” US Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, lowering the required fleetwide average to about 34.5 mpg by 2031. That’s a steep drop from the roughly 50.4 mpg target under the previous rule. Automakers can now meet the standard largely through gas vehicles, reducing pressure to scale BEVs and PHEVs.
Those loosened rules are already reflected in investment decisions, such as Stellantis’ $13 billion plan to expand US production by 50%, with a heavy focus on ICE vehicles. Earlier this year, Trump’s big bill set fines for missing CAFE targets to $0, further weakening the incentive for OEMs to electrify.
That’s some foolish policymaking, considering the world reached peak gas car sales in 2017. The US under Trump will be left behind, just as it will be with its attempts to revive the coal industry.
China still dominates, exports surge
China remains the backbone of global EV sales, even as growth slows. The Chinese market grew 3% year-over-year and 4% month-over-month in November. Year-to-date, EV sales in China are up 19%, with 11.6 million units sold.
One of the biggest headlines out of China is exports. BYD reported a record 131,935 EV exports in November, blowing past its previous high of around 90,000 units set in June. BYD sales in Europe have jumped more than fourfold this year to around 200,000 vehicles, doubled in Southeast Asia, and climbed by more than 50% in South America.
Global snapshot
Global EV sales from January to November 2025 vs January to November 2024, YTD %:
- Global: 18.5 million, +21%
- China: 11.6 million, +19%
- Europe: 3.8 million, +33%
- North America: 1.7 million, -1%
- Rest of World: 1.5 million, +48%
The takeaway: EV demand continues to grow worldwide, but policy support – or the lack thereof – is increasingly shaping where this growth shows up.
“Overall, EV demand remains resilient, supported by expanding model ranges and sustained policy incentives worldwide,” said Rho Motion data manager Charles Lester.
Read more: EV sales *still* have not fallen, cooled, slowed or slumped. Media is lying to you.
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The Elexio is Hyundai’s first electric SUV custom-tailored for the Chinese market, but now it’s headed overseas.
Hyundai is bringing the Elexio electric SUV overseas
Hyundai’s midsize electric SUV was spotted on a carrier truck in Melbourne, Australia, alongside a few of its other vehicles.
Although the Elexio is built by Hyundai’s joint venture with BAIC Motor, Beijing-Hyundai, “tailor-made for Chinese consumers,” we had a feeling it would be sold overseas.
A few months ago, Don Romano, CEO of Hyundai Australia, hinted that the midsize electric SUV could arrive in The Land Down Under. Romano told journalists during an IONIQ 9 launch event that the Elexio’s launch in Australia was “under evaluation,” calling it “a promising vehicle.”
Hyundai confirmed the rumors shortly after, saying the new midsize electric SUV would launch in Australia in early 2026.
According to CarsGuide, the Elexio was caught on a car carrier in Melbourne on Wednesday morning ahead of its official launch.
Powered by an 88.1 kWh battery, the Elexio delivers up to nearly 450 miles (722 km) CLTC range. It’s based on the E-GMP platform, which underpins all IONIQ models and Kia’s EV lineup, with single and dual-motor (AWD) powertrain options. The electric SUV can also recharge from 30% to 80% in about 27 minutes.
The interior is packed with advanced Chinese tech, including Huawei’s advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chip that powers the massive 27″ 4K widescreen display.
The Elexio is 4,615 mm long, 1,875 mm wide, and 1,698 mm tall, with a wheelbase of 2,750 mm, which is a bit shorter than the Tesla Model Y. It’s closer in size to the BYD Yuan Plus, sold overseas as the Atto 3.
Hyundai’s midsize electric SUV is expected to compete with some of Australia’s top-selling EVs, including the Tesla Model Y and Geely EX5.
Prices have yet to be announced, but given the IONIQ 5 starts at $76,200 (AUD), before on-road costs, the Elexio should be slightly cheaper.
In China, the Elexio is available in three trims: Fun, Smart, or Tech, with pre-sale prices starting at RMB 119,800 ($16,900).
Although the electric SUV is launching in Australia and possibly other overseas markets like New Zealand, it’s not expected to be a true global vehicle. Hyundai designed it specifically for Chinese buyers, leveraging local tech and design elements.
For those in the US, if you’re looking for a midsize electric SUV, the IONIQ 5 is worth a look with 300+ miles of range, fast charging, and a spacious, tech-filled interior. With leases starting at just $189 a month, the IONIQ 5 is cheaper than most gas-powered cars in its class. You can use our link to find the Hyundai IONIQ 5 models closest to you.
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