Kids don't dream of owning a dishwasher.

It seems inevitable now that with the ever-terrifying effects of global warming, in the next 20 years or so we shall all drive electric cars - that are about as joyous as dishwashers.

I, amongst other fans of the combustion engine, am not the electric car’s biggest enthusiast. Yes, they get you from a to b and yes, they won’t wake up your nan when you drive past and yes, most importantly, they don’t hurt the planet – but in amongst all of these they somehow loose the most important part of a car.

Soul.

No child has ever sat two millimetres away from a TV screen, staring at a dishwasher they saw in a film. They’ve then never gone and begged their parents for a model of that dishwasher to put on the shelf next to their bed. They’ve never grown-up dreaming of one day owning that dishwasher that they saw on their TV screen all those years ago.

But they do all those things when they see a car. Some strong, caveman-like connection was made between me and the DBS when saw and heard that car in Casino Royale (while it was still in one piece). I still get a bit fuzzy inside whenever I see whatever new piece of art Aston Martin designers have dreamt up this time. My neck out-turns an owl’s whenever I hear one scream past.

That’s because a car’s soul comes from two senses – sight and sound. The symphony of both makes a car more than just a machine.

Electric cars lack this symphony, firstly because lack sounds. Apart from perhaps the ear-splitting beeping they decide to do when you’re reversing and happen to be in the same postcode as a wall. All that they do is a slight whirr whenever you put your foot down, and that’s not enough.

The advantage of an electric motor is that, when you do put your foot down, you’ll end up somewhere on the back seat from all the torque. Or you’ll fall out the boot. The trouble is, your ears will have no idea what has happened, and you’ll sit confused, wondering how you got there, because there was no audible signal at all.

Then there’s sight.

Obviously, I can’t speak for all electric cars, but they also often lack this other element of the symphony. The designers appear to have been replaced by a wind tunnel, and all that happens is that they leave a lump of clay out in a strong enough breeze, and go off of whatever shape they end up with. Theres such a focus on maximising efficiency, on squeezing out the most miles from the 300 tons of batteries below your seat, that they forget that, when it’s parked in your driveway, you’ll sometimes have the misfortune of looking at it.

The designers are then dragged out of their padded cells and evacuated from their straitjackets to stick a fake grille on the front, because apparently, we cannot cope with seeing a car without some holes between the headlights. If there were to be none, we’d probably faint like a Victorian man seeing ankles for the first time. And then die of shock.

The lack of stimulation to these key senses leaves you with a soulless appliance, which gets you from a to b in a flurry of nothingness. Your mood remains constant for the journey - there is no joy. You’re fed up, because you’ve realised that for the same price as your new four-wheeled dishwasher, you could have bought a 924. Which would make you happier.

It wouldn’t save the planet. What it would do though, is make a little kid dream.