In the last few years there has been an increasing market adoption of electric vehicles. Advantages are a reduced environmental impact concerning consumption of nonrenewable energy sources but also concerning CO2, dust and noise emissions. Reduced noise emissions are especially promising for street cleaning in urban settings where residents or pedestrians are frequently exposed to noise of cleaning vehicles. In the course of the German research program "Schaufenster Elektromobilität" electric street sweepers were analyzed concerning their noise emissions. Conventional diesel-powered and electric street sweepers in different operating modes were recorded in a typical environment. The annoyance of the recorded sounds was evaluated in a listening test. Subsequently the influence of different noise components on the annoyance was analyzed and dominant factors were determined. In these type of vehicles, the contribution of the functional equipment to the overall noise is much higher than the contribution of the drive system. To utilize the advantage of low sound emission of electromobility the noise emissions of the functional equipment should be reduced. Thus city cleaning vehicles wouldn't pollute urban soundscapes.