Infiniti Emerg-e review

What's the Infiniti Emerg-e like to drive?
This is an extraordinary car to experience, and not just because it's fast, agile and looks beautiful.

It's the soundtrack that does it: the Infiniti moves off with the slightly unsettling silence that characterises every electric car until the moment the petrol engine fires up. The sound isn't good, because the three-cylinder unit grumbles loudly and in a totally unpredictable way, sometimes revving as you're braking to slow the car down.

Thats quite an unsettling sensation the first time it happens, because the car feels as if its accelerator has stuck open. There are good reasons for the strange noises.

First, the Emerg-es petrol engine doesn't drive the wheels at all, acting instead as a generator for the lithium-ion battery pack. Which means that its activities are not controlled by the accelerator but by the needs of the battery, which needs a boost when the car is driven hard and when the Emerg-e's 30 mile battery-only range is depleted.

On top of this, no work has been done to reduce the noise made by the Infinitis powerpack, because this is a prototype in which other issues have taken priority. So the noises are totally unrepresentative of how a production version would sound, and it's to Infiniti's credit that it's prepared to demonstrate this car in semi-raw form.

Once you know that, and realise why you can be stationary with the petrol engine revving as if you're slipping the clutch, it's easy to enjoy the Emerg-es considerable qualities in other directions.