2 days old!

short trips of 3-4 miles will kill mpg. factor in that you're just learning the car and tada, low mpg. take it on a nice long test drive- maybe a half hour or so. find a road that's around 45mph and very few stoplights. this will give you some good experience to build on.

what were the circumstances of the noises? did you park the car and get out and listen? pop the hood? what were you doing when these noises came up? accelerating, braking, at a stop, turning, anything?

 

that screech is NOT normal at all. i've never heard anything like that. there's some whirring and clicking when you turn the car off, but nothing like a screech you can hear over traffic. i'd have them check that out. a good description will help your tech help you.

and that scraping sound does kinda sound like what i imagine the friction brakes sounding like... a very gentle scrape.

maybe have someone else drive the car first (if it doesn't kill you to let someone else drive :lol and sit yourself in the passenger seat and listen closely. go pop the hood and see if you can find the noise when the car is running but stopped. this will help you describe the issue better.

then go have a tech test drive it with you and point out the noises you're hearing. if you find a good dealership, they'll be willing to listen to you and let you go out on the test drive with them.

good luck

 

that scraping while driving doesn't sound right. it may be the brakes are adjusted too tight. now if you hear that same sound under the hood while stopped, then i'd think it was likely the engine sound that you're not used to.

like i said, just do a couple double-checks first before you jump to conclusions. lots of things you can listen to on your own first to be sure you have something to worry about.

 

From this description ("...out of nowhere...stopped completely"), it sounds more as if you had a pebble or twig get kicked up into a brake, then "spit out". That's a long shot, but I've had it happen a few times over the years, and it's sudden and unnerving.

 

I think so, too. Also, you may be a "sound-sensitive" driver; I've known some.

Finally, in my experience, brakes are usually a little noisy when newest, and noisier at light pedal pressure than full pressure. Just from the new surfaces coming into contact with one another.

But worth checking.

 

You are going to hear things on the car that you have never heard before because when the ICE is not running but the vehicle is moving there is no engine noise to mask other sounds. First, you are going to notice tire noise much more than you used to. Tires contacting the ground and turning against it make a noise all their own. You probably will hear break pad noises. It is a scraping sound because that was breaks do. Again, noise that we would not notice over the sound of an engine.

There are pumps and other items under the hood that run independently of the ICE and you are going to hear them operating. The inverter/converter has its own cooling loop and coolant pump, you can probably hear that when the ICE is not running. The a/c compressor is electric. With the ICE off you will notice its sound pretty distinctly when warmer weather comes along. There is also a fan that pulls cabin air and moves it across the battery for battery cooling. It is thermostatically controlled and it too can be heard under the right conditions.

My point is that there are lots of sounds you either are hearing for the first time, or that you would normally not hear on a vehicle because the items generating the sound don't exist on any other vehicle. If you feel there is a mechanical problem with the vehicle by all means go see the dealer, but if there doesn't seem to be a mechanical problem just live with the sound and take note of when it exists, when it doesn't and what you were doing when the sound started and ended. Then figure out if the sound is related to any particular driving activity or if it is totally random.

 

I had something like that happen to me. Sort of fingernails on the blackboard. It was coming from the left front when I rolled the window down to listen. I stopped the car and it was clearly motion related. I was near home so I drove home and called my wife to the drive way to listen and drove forward and back. Slightly different pitch going back than forward then all of a sudden a bit of plastic popped out of the tire. Would have never known about it or where it came from but my wife saw it. Looked like the protective top to a bottled water, the ones that pop up and down to open and shut. Badly abraded. The noise was gone. I am guessing it got picked up and stuck between the calipers and the disk of the disk brakes and was rubbing.

 

My wife had complained of a sound that was cyclic and the frequency of the sound increased with her speed. I drove for one hour with the radio off and there was no sound. When we all went for a drive, she couldn't hear it any more. I had thought something got stuck in the brakes...it's gone now, so no worries.

 

I used to have to drive old cars too. My ears AND nose were attuned for anything.