Opel Ampera (Chevy Volt for EU) - prices and specs

The European Prius PHEV price and specs have just been released today. I have posted a thread indicating the UK price - which is massive It'll never be viable financially as all the tax benefits and other incentives such as free access to the London Congestion Charge zone (instead of £8 a day) already apply to the gen3 Prius.

There isn't any good reason to buy the Prius PHEV in the UK. The existing Prius gets great economy and the tax benefits shown above, the Leaf costs the same as the Prius PHEV but you have no fuel costs and have free access to the LGC zone too. The Renault Fluence costs much less but you lease the HV batteries. This lower cost could allow you to buy the Fluence, lease the batteries and still have £8,000 to buy/rent a petrol car for the longer runs.

 

Shouldn't be much of a mystery. Opel Ampera is basically a Volt with slightly different front fascia & lighting, everything else is identical so you should get identical results as Volt drivers in U.S. do. Thus on a full tank + charge you should be able to get around 650km, depending on how fast you drive. But simply dividing this by the size of the tank is not at all a realistic way of computing fuel economy, because a typical Ampera driver is not going to do one full charge per tank, you might do 25 charges every tank, or 50, or even 100.

To compute fuel economy you have to know your "electric utililization factor", how many miles are expected to be electric vs. gas. In the U.S., owners are doing about 66% electric so far. But this highly variable from driver to driver, some are doing 98%+ electric while others doing much less. In Europe, with typically shorter distances, I would expect greater electric utilization.

OK, so while in electric mode, taking U.S. EPA figures of 36 kw-hr per 100 miles = 22.37 kw-hr per 100 km, it would cost you around €4.47 every 100km. Real life driver can easily exceed this, I am using 31.5 kw-hr per 100 miles which would be €3.91 per 100km.

In contrast, in your Prius getting 4.6 L/100km, this would cost what, maybe €7.36? In gas mode, the Volt is worse than the Prius, probably 5.9 L/100 km.

In order to gauge the overall fuel cost difference, you must estimate how much of your driving would be outside the Ampera's ~64 km electric range.

 

So basically you are criticizing Opel's website for lack of specificity? Fair enough. The American Volt website, however, does provide the data you need, under feature/specs/fuel:
cruising range, city (gas): 325.5 mi (524 km)
cruising range, highway (gas): 372 mi (599 km)
total range: 407 mi (654 km).
So for 1000+ km trip, in reality since you usually don't go fully empty you probably stop for refuel at 600 km, and every 550 km or so thereafter.
Maybe a little more, since it's safer to go fully empty in these cars, because if you do run totally out of gas, it will switch back to battery for another 5km before completely stopping you.

Yes, the normal tests lose meaning. Thus GM's "230 MPG" fiasco. That's why EPA in U.S. came up with new tests and new label. Before those are in place, to calculate cost of fuel, you simply have to do the calculations yourself based on available data. And with these new cars using mixed fuel sources, fuel consumption will vary with the individual more than ever before, since you have to account for your personal habits, how much of each fuel you would use.