TEST DRIVE - OPEL AMPERAThe Ampera combines battery, electric and petrol power to go for more than 550km
EARLY ADOPTERS make the technology world go around. They are people like the Apple disciples who queue around the block to get the first version of the iPad, when you know the next version, out in a year or so, will have the things that are missing this time around.
They are the people who bought Betamax video and Laser Discs and probably have drawers full of now equally useless gadgets. This writer is one of them. It is a hopeless condition.
Who will be the early adopters when it comes to electric cars? Nobody at the moment seems to know for sure. How could they? They think it will be the tech geeks, or it might be empty-nesters, or young, urban families.
In true marketing whitewashing, nobody appears to be excluded, but there seems to be a group that is likely to be avoided. They are those people who need to travel a long distance now and again. Sure, there will be fast charging stations but it will feel like an eternity compared to the time it takes to fill a car at a petrol pump. And who really wants to stop for lunch four times during a drive from Dublin to Cork?
For the fanatical early adopters, the arrival of the Nissan Leaf early next year will be magical and with a realistic price tag of €29,995 it is likely to sell out pretty quickly. But what if you can hold on a little bit longer?
Opel tells us that you can have your electric dream, just without the ‘range anxiety’ nightmare. They call it the Ampera. This is an extended-range electric vehicle and you might wonder where this sits in the evolving EV puzzle.
If you consider that the Toyota Prius, a hybrid which uses a small electric motor to help a petrol engine use less fuel, is at one end of the scale and the Nissan Leaf, which just uses an electric motor, is at the other end of the scale, the Ampera is somewhere in the middle. Ampera uses batteries and an electric motor and with these you can travel 64km on electric power only. But, unlike the Nissan Leaf, the Ampera also has a small petrol engine and this will spark into life when the electricity runs out. But, and this is the crucial difference, the petrol engine is used to power the electric motor instead of driving the wheels directly. This means that you can drive another 500km in range-extender mode. So there is no stopping, no fast chargers and no anxiety.
So, if your daily commute is less than 64km then you might not need to use fuel at all. But if you do need to go further, it is no big deal.
So what is it like to drive? Car reviews may start to get quite dull as already we are beginning to say the same thing. The Ampera is very quiet, especially in EV mode, and it is amazing that when you take away sound you lose so much of a car’s soul.
Opel has done a good job of weighting the steering and on motorways the ride felt refined. The switch to extended-range mode happens quietly and seamlessly enough with just a vocal whirr of the engine and a change on the futuristic dash to alert you. Going from 0-100km/h takes just nine seconds and the top speed of 160km/h is still enough to lose you your licence.
Yes, you are using fuel if you are on extended-range mode but you are getting 1.6l/100km, that is 175mpg and emissions are less than 40g/km of CO2. So is it worth the wait? It will still be a lot to pay for a four-seater family car but this might make more sense for those non-urban dwellers, to whom running out of power could be too big a gap to plug. Opel’s Ampera will probably cost €30,000 with the Government grant.
It will come to Ireland in January 2012.