The soft whirring was barely audible amid the pounding music and the babble of voices at the Paris motor show on Thursday, but we’ll be hearing a whole lot more of it in the years to come.

The noise was Opel’s Ampera-e all-electric compact car, driven on stage by the company’s CEO, Karl-Thomas Neumann. The Ampera-e is the European equivalent of the Chevrolet Bolt, and will go on sale sometime in the first half of next year.

The whir could equally have come from other all-electric vehicles making their debut at the Mondial de l’Automobile, though. Smart and BMW rolled out new production models, while Volkswagen and Mercedes showed striking all-electric concept cars.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here