400h Sounds

[davepruce]

Just returning to my office through the carpark, and a guy jumps into his 400h to drive away. Now I've never heard one of these close up so thought 'this'll be interesting, they are supposed to be silent without much load' so then to my surprise, it started and sounded just like a normal car (much louder relatively speaking than my LS).

Whats occuring?

He just drove away with the car making all the normal sounds a car with an engine makes!

So much for silence!

Any thoughts?

[Mr Pants!]

If the batteries need more power the engine starts, perhaps he had the aircon on and with the drain of the electric motors, the engine kicked in. It is totally automatic when the engine does kick in, for example on a very very cold morning the engine will come on every time.

When they are running on elec motors, they are not totally silent anyway....

It is about economy more than silence, I have to confess, I think the engine sounds quite nice and meety on them! :)