Vauxhall/Opel’s Ampera can be driven 40 miles on an electric charge sucked into its 16kWh lithium ion batteries in three hours through a standard cable with a standard B&Q connector on each end. Eighty per cent of European drivers do 30 miles a day or less so Ampera can be considered to be an electric car.
Some very senior people in the European motor industry privately admit however, that though they make these cars, they have little affinity with the achievement while mains electricity is still drawn from carbon fuel. If it was known to be renewables or nuclear – fair enough.
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For some people then, the Ampera falls at that hurdle. For others it will fall at the second – namely that many owners will continuously use its on-board auxiliary petrol engine to extend that range or to use the car without waiting around for it to recharge.
At that point, Ampera is more akin to a hybrid in that the petrol engine is recharging the electric motor and the electric motor drives the wheels. The distinction between what Vauxhall/Opel has now christened Voltec technology and what is called hybrid is that hybrids have electric or liquid fuel or a combination driving the wheels, while the Voltec is always driven by the electric motor only. It helps in the battle for hearts and minds. The pub bragging-rights allow the “I can drive it without ever using petrol” claim whether he does or not.
If the driver pootling home on his daily electric commute gets a phone call to remind him he should be in Wigan for the Spurs away game, he can get there and back just by using the reserve tank of petrol.
The first Amperas will be imported from the US the year after next and will be made in the UK two years later than that.
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By GlobalDataPrices have yet to be fixed, but taking the GBP5,000 government incentive into account (if it survives the new government’s public spending cost-cutting axe) they should be well under GBP30,000.
The cost of the Ampera that we drove was very definitely not under GBP30,000. In fact it was barely under GBP1million. It was one of only two prototypes in the UK and very, very precious.
Before driving the car, the batteries were run down so that we could experience the effect of the petrol engine cutting in to keep the batteries charged.
The moment that intervention occurs is far from clear. The electric motor is silent, the petrol engine is almost inaudible and has very little in the way of a rev range to make its performance obvious. In the test car the loudest noise was the exhaust and that only because it was a prototype fabrication and not the finished article.
The petrol motor behaviour has no relationship with the road speed. It is related only to the power demand such as when the car is going up-hill.
The dash readouts take some understanding. There are temperature warning lights for batteries, electric engine, petrol engine, the electric system and the battery system. When the batteries get very cold the heater switches on to improve their range.
There is a readout for electric range and petrol range and the combined figure appears between the two. As soon as the petrol engine cuts in the electric range future greys out. There is no rev counter because the driver has no control over the revs.
Instruments admonish the driver if he brakes or accelerates too hard. Caning the electric motors is a bit counter-productive when the owner can be presumed to be on a Co2 reduction mission. The error in hard braking is that the regenerative braking system can only take so much and then it quits and tells the hydraulic brakes to take over. That negates the whole point of carrying around the heavy energy collection and storage system.
Either piece of bad behaviour is marked by a little ball moving up and down a vertical pathway and changing its colour to brown when it disapproves.
This then is the face of Voltec technology – a brand name within the industry categorisation known as E-REV or Extended-Range Electric Vehicle.
Ampera is engaging to drive in that there is a lot going on that is being monitored, rather than there being a lot going on that you can control – as in an petrol car. It’s a good effort and well thought-out. But the really rewarding thing for us was that we were able to return the million dollar car to its nervous owner neither banged nor broken.
Rob Golding
