A Minnesota driver found out the hard way that even an electric car can land you with a noise violation.
Police in Stillwater pulled over a man behind the wheel of the new Dodge Charger Daytona EV and wrote him a ticket for having a “loud exhaust.” The problem: the all-electric Charger has no muffler or tailpipe.
Officers later clarified the citation stemmed from Dodge’s new Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust system, a synthetic sound feature built into the Charger EV. The system uses external speakers and chambers to mimic the roar of a gas-powered muscle car and can reach volumes of up to 126 decibels - louder than many traditional engines.
The driver disputed the ticket, saying he wasn’t using the loudest drive mode at the time and that another car nearby may have been the source of the noise. The case now highlights a legal gray area as cities and states apply traditional exhaust laws to a new era of electric vehicles.
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