Why are Gears and Noise so Important in a Car?

or, who should really be complaining about silent EVs?

I’ve often read social media comments from those who don’t like EVs saying that one of the reasons they don’t like them is because they don’t have gears or any engine noise.

Photo by okay wakeup on Unsplash

In fact that tends to be one of the ‘genuine’ reasons that people quote when railing against the move to electric (When I say ‘genuine’ I mean reasons that are founded in verifiable fact rather than ones that are just spurious bull propagating misinformation: ‘The batteries will die after three years’, ‘There’s nowhere to charge them’ etc.) In fact Imogen Bhogal from the Fully Charged Show has told the story of turning up to an interview with someone from high up in the fossil fuel industry in her EV and being asked ‘Where did you park your appliance?’

So there does seem to be a school of thought that EVs are not real cars and that - by taking the engine out of the car (and, hence, the noise and the gears) it has somehow emasculated the vehicle.

Let’s examine that a little bit.

Photo by serjan midili on Unsplash

I’ve spent a large chunk of my adult vehicle-driving life in Porsche 911s. I’ve had three and they’ve all been excellent cars (passed everything except the petrol stations). They were lovely to drive, fast, responsive, smooth, and noisy. The burble of the flat 6 Boxer engine was unmistakeable and something that really added to the allure of driving these fantastic cars.