I've never seen an electric car up close are they quieter than normal cars?

One more point

I live on a main road with my front door opening directly on to the pavement, so I was quietly (gedditt?) envisioning a distant future with no traffic noise at all.....and now this classic piece on nanny stateism.

Palace since 19 August 1972. Palace 1 (Tony Taylor) Liverpool 1 (Emlyn Hughes)

We bought a Nissan leaf as the company's "social values" showpiece, early adopters too!
So early, in fact, that the battery on it had a range of 100 miles (never got that) and only got 38 miles in the winter.

From the inside there is nothing but road noise which on the motorway felt so unnatural that as a passenger I got horrendous motion sickness. Outside noise is a quiet(ish) but distinguishable whine.

Charging it wasn't cheap despite the various schemes and took at least 30 minutes at service stations to get 60 miles worth of charge on a "fast" point.

All in all, the worst purchase ever. The resale value was f*** all too, it's value absolutely bombed. We gave it as a parting gift to a salesman who left us. In truth, it saved me the time and effort of trying to con some dimwit into buying it, which was highly unlikely as the biggest plum had already purchased it (me).

Unless it's a Tesla, wait and see what develops I'd say.

When I changed my car nine months ago I looked seriously at buying a second hand Tesla as it ticked all of the boxes for me but having monitored the prices for about a year I got the feeling that the second hand prices were being kept artificially high and I didn't want to find that they crashed as soon as I bought one.

In the end I took out a four year PCP on a gas guzzling three litre diesel but at least it's Euro 6 compliant.

The other negative aspect to Tesla ownership is that they do seem to have a habit of catching fire spontaneously

I guess for safety purposes they will need to emit some noise to warn pedestrians of their approach.

Mind you, once upon a time, most major cities and towns throughout the UK operated trolleybuses and they were not equipped with any sort of synthetic sound. Then again they had the nickname of "silent killer"!

Hopefully over time a suitable and non-irritating noise will be used by electric vehicles. Perhaps in time you'll be able to download your car noise of choice

That brought back memories that I'd long forgotten about. I used to go to school in Kingston and often caught the trolleybus from New Malden to Kingston