Vauxall/Opel Ampera

The Ampera is a five seater, five door, hatchback family car with a hybrid, petrol/electric propulsion system. The Ampera is designed as an everyday mainstream car rather than an ‘urban runabout’.

Extended range electric car

Based directly on the Chevrolet Volt’s drivertrain, the Ampera has a lithium-ion battery pack with a 1.4 litre petrol range-extending engine that drives a generator to provide electric power when the car is driven beyond the 40-mile battery range. Its total range is over 300 miles and the batteries can be recharged using a normal household mains supply socket. The Ampera is a plug-in series hybrid or, as General Motors would have us call it ‘an E-REV – Extended-Range Electric Vehicle with a Voltec electric propulsion system.’

Euro American electric car

Although the drivetrain comes from the American Volt, the exterior and interior design of the car is European. The most obvious change is to the front-end of the vehicle which reflects Vauxhall / Opel’s current approach to airflow management.

All electric motors develop full torque from a standing start and the Ampera performs more like a V6 turbodiesel from 0 to 40 mph. GM people claim that it’s smooth, fun to drive and very similar to driving a conventional automatic.

Production plans

The turmoil over ownership of Vauxhall /Opel has left GM’s production plans in some disarray. At first, it seemed likely that GM would build the Vauxhall Ampera at the Ellesmere Port factory in Cheshire, home of the Astra. Production would commence in 2011 / 2012, using the Volt powertrain. Magna reversed those plans and disappointed PM Gordon Brown who has been on a mission to build the Ampera at Ellesmere Port, thereby ensuring that the plant had a certain future and the workers’ jobs were assured.

Now that GM has changed its mind over the sale of its European offshoot and announced a huge redundancy programme in a bid to turn long-term financial losses into profit, the future of the Ampera’s production plant is once again far from clear. At one stage it appeared certain that all Amperas would be built in the same Detroit-Hamtramck plant, Michigan, as the Volt. Bob Lutz, the GM v-p most closely associated with the development of the Volt, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars.

But GM are now stressing that no final decision has yet been made. The company is tempted by a share of the money earmarked by the British government for the development of an electric/hybrid industry in the UK . It may turn out that Gordon Brown is sufficiently persuasive to win back the Ampera for Ellesmere Port – if not for the first model then perhaps for the second-generation in 2015 /2016, with Detroit-built vehicles in the interim.

Electra and Ampera electric car models?

One aspect of GM’s plans, however has remained consistent and that is the introduction of the Chevrolet Volt into European markets some time after its launch in the US in late 2010. GM obviously considers that the Volt and Ampera are sufficiently different visually, and can be separated in price and specification levels, so that both models have individual sales potential. Maximising the usage of the Volt drivetrain has obvious benefits for GM. But will GM use the name ‘Volt’ in Europe? The company may adopt a more ‘European’ model name – ‘Electra’ is one possibility. By 2012 we could be seeing a Vauxhall Electra as well as the Vauxhall Ampera competing head to head in the UK market.

Selling the car but not the batteries

Pricing remains a key issue. GM’s target price for the Ampera in the UK is around £25,000. The price of the Volt, or Electra, in the UK is likely to be considerably more costly, given that the US price could be as high as $40,000. GM is likely to adopt the same tactics as other manufacturers and reduce the sticker price by selling the car separately from the batteries – which would be leased.