Paris motor show turns on to electric cars

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.

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