Here's a photo of a new Opel e-Pionier Edition car, the center of a display at the Frankfurt Airport. I tried to get photos of the advertising, but they came out even worse than this, and mostly illegible. The price of this high-end Ampera model is over 49,000 Euros--about $60,000+ dollars, depending on the exchange rate. The base Ampera is about 42 or 43,000 Euros. Both of those include German VAT tax of 19% so far as I could tell. This is an electric car with a back up gas engine, like the Volt as I understand it. The literature claimed it could go about 500 km (a bit under 300 miles) on a charge and a tank of gas. I was a bit surprised to see this at the airport as something that seems to be available now, because I hadn't seen other advertising for it on signs, etc. I'm wondering: is this related to the Volt? I seem to remember Opel and GM had a connection at one point. This will be my last bit of news from Europe for the time being. After taking this picture, I got on a plane back to the US.
Opel Ameria is European version of Volt, it is 99% the same car with exception of some design pieces.
Ampera has a different design, had a hold mode from the start and I believe it may hybridize more at speed. Opel is GM's' German subsidiary, a name used in Europe, except in the UK where they own Vauxhall, which is now just a matter of badging. After the bankruptcy GM was going to sell Opel but they changed their minds.
$60k . . . . . . that's too bad GM can't build a hybrid that the middle class can afford. You'd think that this would be the goal ... to make an affordable hybrid so that sales numbers can make a showing of the over all market. What with the middle class getting smaller and smaller, it doesn't look like that'll happen, even if the price does come down to something more reasonable.
There are EV grants of about $5,000 to $7,000 available in most European Countries. Also cars are subject to VAT/sales tax which varies from Country to Country but is usually around 20%! That money is used to provide our free health care, the theory being people who buy more expensive luxury goods pay more but everyone gets the health care. The UK Ampera has recently introduced a new base model which is only a little more expensive than the Nissan Leaf and hardly much more than the Prius Plug In, and thus has created some excitement in the UK EV world. Why get a Leaf with its 70 mile range when for a couple more grand you can get the Ampera with its 35 mile real world range with the back up of a petrol engine? The same is true of the PIP which here is way over priced by about £6,000/$9,200 compared to the US versions, and thus why pay buy a PIP with 10 miles range when for not much more you can buy the Ampera with 35? The Ampera doesn't hold any political statements here either. Toyota UK have really messed up with the pricing of the PIP in the UK and sales are described as slow. Would you pay $49,000 for a PIP? No, neither would I!
Opel is losing a great deal of money. The European GM estimate are losses of $1.3B this year, $1.1B next year, the head of GM Europe just got reassigned.
Right, but had they sold Opel/Vauxhall they'd have lost their European engineering and brand. That would have been short-termist, a different thing entirely to killing off a few smaller North American brands.
How do Americans find the styling of the Ampera? Do you prefer it to the Volt or do you prefer the Volt? Personally I think the Volt looks a little unfinished and love the Ampera, but maybe there still is, though not as great as it once was, a US/European style difference.
I understand that the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera uses a variant of the ICE and stiffer suspension tuning to the Chevy Volt. And there are no doubt a range of ancillaries that are locally-sourced because of availability or legislation. Robert Llewellyn on Fully Charged TV has had a few goes on pre-production versions (and the EV rolls Royce).
I like the styling of the Ampera way more, but I would imagine the Volt looks like it does because it had to look close to the rest of the Chevy family styling.
