Steve since (dunno when) EVs have to have a pedestrian warning that operates at town speeds. Older EVs, like my 2019 car did not have to have it, and most don't.
The stealth mode is something I need to be aware of when driving in built up areas.

have some kind of noisemaking device fitted to EVs to make them safer in areas with a lot of pedestrians.

It used to be that the clanking of milk bottles gave adequate warning.

exHowfener wrote: ↑Fri Mar 07, 2025 11:49 am

have some kind of noisemaking device fitted to EVs to make them safer in areas with a lot of pedestrians.

It used to be that the clanking of milk bottles gave adequate warning.

His name was Ernie…Ernie…

Barbara Flynn in Open All Hours…

Clover Dairies. I suspect some of our members might not remember those.

@Amor Vincit Omnia Steve - at slow speeds EVs do already make artificial noise - up to about 15mph (under EU law). Above that, from a pedestrian point of view, most noise is actually road noise from the tyres.

Internal noise it's true that there's little to no 'engine noise' - when I first got an EV I found this quite strange... but once used to it, I am now painfully conscious of how loud most engines are. I genuinely find driving an EV long distances far less stressful, and I think the reduced noise is a part of that (but appreciate not everyone will feel the same!)

I am perhaps a bit of a boring and sensible driver (I'm a member of the IAM...) so excitement isn't my top priority, but my current car (an MG4) is, in my opinion, quite fun to drive, especially on country roads - it's always got instant acceleration available, it's got a low and balanced centre of mass and weight distribution, and as a rear wheel drive car it feels like its pushing (rather than pulling) you through corners (and it's easy to get a bit of understeer from it if that's what you're looking for...)

I'm sure there are more interesting cars to drive, but it'll put your average family hatchback to shame.

Paul Drawmer wrote: ↑Fri Mar 07, 2025 10:51 am Steve since (dunno when) EVs have to have a pedestrian warning that operates at town speeds. Older EVs, like my 2019 car did not have to have it, and most don't.
The stealth mode is something I need to be aware of when driving in built up areas.

Noise emitting became law in 2019, but most EVs did it before this (and I've usually found that it can't be heard at all from within the car) - the bigger issue I've found over the years is that pedestrians don't associate this type of noise with danger or a vehicle - I've driven down a road behind a pedestrian just happily walking down the middle of the road and had to wind my window down and blast my stereo so that he noticed me.

I suspect as EVs become more mainstream this will change, but you're right that it's definitely something to be aware of (on balance though, I've also seen this issue in my Dad's Toyota C-HR, so it's not just an EV thing - many modern cars are pretty quiet, especially when new!)

(reading that back @Paul Drawmer I hope it doesn't read that I'm saying you're wrong - I'm not, pretty sure you're right that BMW didn't include the noise emitter until they had to! In my first EV I had a switch that let me turn this off - in my post 2019 version that switch was removed )

@Stif Grant, I’m definitely one of the quiet, relaxed and stress-free brigade. That’s certainly true these days, but I’ve never really been much of a petrol head. I like the fact that I can drive for a couple of hours in my little Yaris using just the two pedals, steering wheel and indicator. Having an electronic parking break is just great in traffic, and the head up display on the windscreen gives me all the basic information. Old habits die hard, however and I still find myself looking at the speedo on the dash.

Basically, to my mind, the main point of my car is to get me from A to B comfortably and quietly with minimal effort on my part, while driving at a speed that keeps up with the traffic but stays within the limits dictated by the law or common sense; those two, of course, don’t always have much in common.

Another Yaris hybrid owner here, and it regularly does 65mpg locally and I've had 80mpg on longer runs. I recently looked very hard at swapping into an EV as the Yaris is best when silently gliding on EV mode. I didn't want to spend too much over the Yaris value though as it would take too long to recoup the savings, even on a cheaper overnight tatiff, and with timing my home heat pump to predominantly run at the same time.

After extensive research I've concluded it's just too much hassle to swap and I'll probably not save any money. I like to have a warranty and the Toyota is covered for 10 years... My partner pays Mini £550 for an annual extension to the factory warranty on her car. BMW wanted almost £1400/ year to warranty an i3 I considered. The servicing was barely less. Nobody in the SW is interested in fitting a charger, I contacted three firms and filled out lengthy forms. Nobody replied. I read about lots of issues with home chargers failing after 2 or 3 years. Then I looked at public chargers for the 5 or 6 longer trips I do every year, apart from the fact that the ridiculous 80p/kwh was probably going to wipe out any fuel savings I made, the reliability of them seems to be woeful looking at Google maps feedback. I don't think I could find a review of a petrol station that couldn't dispense petrol if I tried. The range provided by most EVs seems to be a case of knock 30% off the WLTP for summer, and in winter maybe you'll get half if you wear a thick jumper and don't use the heater.... that puts a lot of cars in my budget at barely 100 miles in winter, and I really don't want to muck about at a non working public charger when it's -1c outside.

In the end I just gave up on the idea, and asked myself why give yourself a load of hassle when I have absolutely none now.

We have gone full EV now.....

I got a Polestar 2 LRDM Performance as a company car last year, mostly because the BIK tax is so cheap but it's been a really really nice car. I cover about 2,000 miles a month, mostly on the motorway and spend a couple of nights away a week so initially thought living with an EV would be a pain in the rear but it really hasn't.

It gets charged at home at 7p a kWh and then charged on the road at Tesla superchargers at 39p a kWh as I pay the monthly subscription. I get 280-300 miles when temperatures are in the teens and 220-250 when it's cold/freezing. Cost per mile (for electricity) is around 2p if charged at home and 10p when charged on the road. It's got well over 15k miles on it so far and the tyres are still holding up fine. Maintenance on EV's is so cheap, no oil to change, it doesn't use its brakes very much.

I chose the Polestar as it's such a nice car to drive and it feels like a real car not a laptop with wheels. Most of the functionality is through the central screen but it's not loaded down with 1000's of options and choices. With it being the Performance version it has Ohlins dampers and Brembo brakes, batteries under the floor / in the transmission tunnel means it handles like its on rails.

The torque is always there with EV's no waiting for gears to change, revs to build, turbos to spin, just instant speed. I recently sold my Mercedes C63 as the Polestar is better and real world faster in every way (except the noise).

We were that impressed with the Polestar we have recently bought my wife a Smart#3 which is 'only' a single motor but it still zips along. It was a 2 month old demonstrator and we got a cracking discount. It has a smaller battery so doesn't have the range of the Polestar but it doesn't travel as far so only needs charging a couple of times a month. The insurance was less than her 8 year old petrol Mercedes B class, which was surprising as the Smart is worth 4x as much and is significantly faster.

5oclockhero wrote: ↑Fri Mar 07, 2025 1:31 pm
I read about lots of issues with home chargers failing after 2 or 3 years.

A friend has had exactly this with their 3yo hybrid BMW that wasn't charging. They took the car to BMW who diagnosed the home charger (not the car) was at fault and which is out of warranty by about 3 months with a quote of £650 to repair. All similar issues and costs of course could apply to ICEs with bad luck.

We got a plug in hybrid as a compromise three years ago (a six month old Volvo V60 T6 Recharge). Living in a city with no off street parking, having 200 mile plus trips every couple of months and liking a nice drive down to France or Italy it seemed like the right choice. I was slightly concerned about charging infrastructure in the UK as service stations just don’t seem to have enough chargers and we don’t always have the luxury of being able to travel at quieter times for weekends away. In addition when visiting family in the sticks there are much less convenient public charging options (e.g drive 20mins to then sit in a car park while it charges). Conversely I'm less worried about long drives in Europe. Every service station I’ve seen in France has plenty of chargers (although local charging in towns is more limited)!
Anyway, we’ve got a powerful enough engine to compensate for the extra weight of batteries and engine and don’t have any ‘range’ anxiety. Local trips are primarily done on electric and we get 25miles on the battery. Maybe not much but enough for pootling around running errands-I see the latest version of the car now has double the range, I think showing the advances in technology. We’ve got three or four public charging points within a few mins walk so generally don’t have an issue charging when need to. The battery supplements the engine when using that and still get a decent MPG equivalent to previous petrol cars on long trips.
However, when we change cars it seems pretty natural to go fully electric. Ranges of 300 miles plus and now the number of options available mean we’ll find something that suits us. Like others I was surprised that I did enjoy driving on electric and I really don’t like driving locally now with the engine.

Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: ↑Fri Mar 07, 2025 1:48 am
PS> On point worth mentioning, that I picked up some time ago, for those that are strongly biased against EVs on a range anxiety basis; take a look at Nissan / Renault. They have EVs that are 100% electric for motive power i.e. battery with electric motor, BUT the battery is 100% charged by a petrol powered ICE i.e. refuel as required at the local petrol station (of which there are many).

I had use of a Nissan SUV EV Qashqai for a week a few months ago and I was quite impressed with it and its method of power which I had no awareness of beforehand.

Changing any of our present cars is not a consideration unless something drastic happens (e.g. a major EuroMillions win) as we don't do many thousands of miles in total so there's no reason to change but reading everyones views and experiences is very interesting.

Baser wrote: ↑Fri Mar 07, 2025 1:46 pm We have gone full EV now.....

I got a Polestar 2 LRDM Performance as a company car last year, mostly because the BIK tax is so cheap

It seems to me that the only people that can actually make the sums add up in their favour, are those on very generous company BIK tax schemes. For those of us buying used models privately, even taking advantage of the horrendous depreciation currently creating some very tempting used prices, I can still barely get the maths to work.

Electricity is not actually cheap despite what everyone thinks. Petrol is cheap. It's only because about 50% of the price of it is duty and taxes that it becomes expensive. We have already seen the government remove the zero road tax benefit for EVs from next month, and they will surely begin to look for ways to fill the shortfall in fuel duty in the future. If that happens, motoring is going to become very expensive for us all. I really don't think that solar panels and turbines are ever going to provide cheap electricity, and much of our so called 'green' power generation is simply burning wood imported from America.... to power our electric cars that are made mostly in China. We probably don't want to think too much about how the Chinese are powering their car factories (coal?) We are moving stuff of dubious origin halfway across the globe using horrendously polluting diesel ships. Its almost desperately funny. I'm probably the only one that thinks simply digging up the coal still under Yorkshire might actually be greener than what we are doing now. But getting back on topic.... until the government give me an extra 10% or more basic tax allowance for privately buying a used EV, I'm sticking with petrol it seems, until they ban it, of course.

Not a comment for or against, but here is a quote from the Wikipedia "History of the electric vehicle page"

1890's - 1910's: Golden age

Electric cars found popularity among well-heeled customers who used them as city cars, where their limited range proved to be even less of a disadvantage.

Acceptance of electric cars was initially hampered by a lack of power infrastructure

Bahnstormer_vRS wrote:
PS> On point worth mentioning, that I picked up some time ago, for those that are strongly biased against EVs on a range anxiety basis; take a look at Nissan / Renault. They have EVs that are 100% electric for motive power i.e. battery with electric motor, BUT the battery is 100% charged by a petrol powered ICE i.e. refuel as required at the local petrol station (of which there are many).

We have been running a Qashqai e-power for the past 18 months, which, as you say, is driven by electric motor where the battery is replenished by an on board petrol generator.

It’s very smooth and quiet,although the petrol engine runs a lot of the time, when you’re pressing on.

Ours seems to average high 50’s to the gallon - not a lot different to a similar sized conventional hybrid - but with the advantage of smoothness and constant linear torque.

Overall though, I feel it’s more appliance than fun, and I’m glad I have my bikes as an alternative ‘involving’ experience.