EV Warning Sound Rules in Australia: What ADR 113 Means for You

Every new electric and hybrid car sold in Australia must now make a sound at low speed. The EV warning sound rule in Australia, Australian Design Rule (ADR) 113/00, has applied to all newly supplied electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell vehicles since 1 November 2026. New models had to comply a year earlier, from 1 November 2025. The sound must play from just above standstill up to 20 km/h.

If you already own an EV, nothing changes for you. The rule isn’t retrospective, and most cars on sale here already had a warning sound because their home markets required one. What’s new is that it’s now law in Australia, with set volume levels and no off switch.

The system is called AVAS (acoustic vehicle alerting system): a small external speaker that plays a synthetic hum when the car moves slowly. It exists for pedestrians, especially people who are blind or have low vision, who rely on engine noise to know a car is approaching. Here’s what the rule requires, which vehicles it covers, and what it means if your car’s hum annoys you.

What the EV warning sound rule in Australia requires

ADR 113/00 sets a minimum volume, a maximum volume and a speed range, and it bans drivers from muting the sound. The federal government made the standard in January 2024 under the Road Vehicle Standards Act 2018, and the full ADR 113/00 text is on the Federal Register of Legislation. It adopts UN Regulation No. 138, the same standard used across Europe, and also accepts the US equivalent, FMVSS 141.

Requirement	What ADR 113/00 says
Speed range	Just above 0 km/h up to and including 20 km/h
Minimum level at 10 km/h	50 dB(A)
Minimum level at 20 km/h	56 dB(A)
Minimum level when reversing	47 dB(A)
Maximum level	75 dB(A)
Pitch	Must rise and fall with speed
Sound when stopped	Optional, at the carmaker’s choice
Pause or mute switch	Prohibited
Driver-selectable sounds	Allowed, if every option complies

Source: ADR 113/00, Appendix A (Federal Register of Legislation, January 2024).

The 20 km/h cut-off is there because tyre and wind noise make a car audible above that speed. Some community and motoring sites have quoted 25 km/h. The ADR says 20 km/h, though carmakers are free to keep the sound running at higher speeds.

The pitch rule matters more than it sounds. The tone has to shift by an average of at least 0.8% for every 1 km/h between 5 and 20 km/h. That gives a pedestrian an audible cue that the car is speeding up or slowing down, the way an engine note would.

Reversing gets its own minimum. A car doesn’t need a reversing AVAS sound if it’s fitted with a compliant reversing alarm instead, which is more common on vans and trucks.

Which vehicles need an EV warning sound?

Any electrified vehicle that can move without a combustion engine running is covered. In practice that means battery EVs, conventional hybrids, plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

The rule applies across almost every road vehicle category:

• Passenger cars and SUVs
• People movers and light buses
• Heavy buses
• Utes, vans and light goods vehicles
• Medium and heavy trucks

Motorcycles, mopeds, scooters and trikes are not covered. Neither are trailers. An electric motorbike can still roll up silently.

Buses are in. Electric and hydrogen buses, which pull away from stops in crowded streets, fall under the heavy bus category.

Petrol and diesel cars are out, even though some modern ones are close to silent when idling through a car park. The rule targets vehicles that can move with no engine running at all, because that’s where the sound disappears completely.

Hybrids are the part buyers often miss. A conventional hybrid such as a RAV4 Hybrid creeps through car parks on electric power alone, so it’s just as quiet as an EV at walking pace. It’s covered by the same rule. Our EV vs hybrid comparison explains how much of a hybrid’s driving happens with the engine off.

Does the rule affect the EV you already own?

No. ADR 113/00 applies to vehicles when they’re first supplied to the Australian market. If your EV or hybrid was already registered before its compliance date, you don’t need to fit anything, and nobody will ask you to at rego time.

Most existing cars already make a sound regardless. The government’s impact analysis found that every light quiet vehicle sold here comes from a country that already requires AVAS. Europe, the UK, the US, Japan, South Korea and China all mandate it. The US rule, FMVSS 141, applied to all covered new vehicles from 1 September 2020.

For carmakers, compliance was mostly a paperwork and tuning exercise. The analysis estimated the cost at about $77 per vehicle where a model already had AVAS hardware and about $182 where it didn’t, with changes ranging from minor software updates to adding a speaker and wiring.

If you’re shopping secondhand, an older EV or a grey import may have no warning sound at all. That’s legal for a car already on the road. Our guide to buying a used Tesla covers what else to check on older stock.

Can you turn off the EV warning sound?

Not on a new car built to the rule. Paragraph 6.2.7 of ADR 113/00 prohibits any pause function, so carmakers can’t give drivers a button or menu setting that mutes the sound.

What carmakers can do is offer choice. The ADR allows several selectable sounds, and different volume settings, provided each one meets the minimum and maximum levels. If you dislike the hum, check the vehicle settings menu for alternative tones before you go further.

Some owners of earlier cars have disconnected the speaker themselves. We couldn’t find an Australian authority that has ruled on whether that’s legal for a car built before the mandate. For a car built to ADR 113/00, removing a system it needed for compliance is a riskier move. It could raise questions at a roadworthy inspection, or with your insurer after a low-speed collision with a pedestrian. Check with your state’s registration authority before touching it.

Don’t confuse the external warning sound with the cabin “driving sound” some cars offer. Several brands, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche among them, play synthetic sounds inside the car, and those can usually be switched off. The pedestrian sound comes from a separate speaker outside the cabin, and that’s the one the rule locks on.

Owners describe a huge range of tones. Some brands go for a soft hum, others for something closer to a spaceship, a light sabre or a choir. Some owners find certain cars louder at a crawl than a modern petrol engine. Others say they can barely hear their own car’s sound from the driver’s seat, though pedestrians outside hear it clearly. Where a car offers options, they’re presets: you pick from the carmaker’s list, not your own audio file.

Why Australia brought in the rule

Quiet cars are hard to detect for people who rely on sound to get around. The government’s final impact analysis, published by the Office of Impact Analysis in May 2024, made the case with Australian data:

• More than 160 pedestrians die on Australian roads each year, according to BITRE (2023)
• Pedestrian crashes cost the economy more than $1.2 billion a year
• In a 2018 Monash University Accident Research Centre survey for Vision Australia, 35% of blind and low-vision respondents said they had collided or nearly collided with an electric or hybrid vehicle

The option the government chose, covering light and heavy vehicles, was projected to prevent 68 deaths, 2,675 serious injuries and 2,962 minor injuries over 35 years. Its net benefit was estimated at $208.4 million, with a benefit-cost ratio of 2.23. You can read the Office of Impact Analysis report for the full modelling.

The analysis also found that without a mandate, the share of new quiet vehicles with AVAS might only reach about 84% of sales, and not until the 2060s. That’s the argument for making it law rather than relying on carmakers.

Vision Australia campaigned for the rule from 2018. The public consultation drew 392 submissions. Governments and industry strongly supported a mandate, while individuals split about 60/40 in favour, with noise pollution the main objection.

The fleet these rules will shape is growing fast. The Electric Vehicle Council counted more than 454,000 EVs on Australian roads at the end of 2025, before counting the far larger hybrid fleet.

What the EV warning sound means when you buy

For new-car buyers, the practical impact is small but worth checking on a test drive. Listen to the car at walking pace in a car park, with the windows down. Each brand tunes its sound differently, from a soft hum to something closer to a sci-fi whine.

A few things to ask the dealer:

1. Are there alternative sounds? Some cars let you choose between several compliant tones in the settings menu.
2. Does it play when stopped? Stationary sound is optional, so some cars go silent at a standstill and others keep humming.
3. What does reversing sound like? Reversing has a separate minimum, and some cars use a distinct tone.

None of this changes what the car costs to run. The sound only plays below 20 km/h, and it has nothing to do with range, charging or servicing.

If you’re weighing up your first electric car, our EV buyer’s guide for beginners covers the bigger decisions, and you can line up models side by side with our electric car comparison tool. Browse every model on sale in our electric vehicles hub.