Is the Opel Ampera GM's most important car ever? Ben Oliverdrives it, and outlines the significance and troubled history of a car that's still two years from being built
‘THIS IS the most important car we’ve ever made,” one General Motors insider says as I prepare to drive an early prototype of the Opel Ampera, the world’s first extended-range electric vehicle, or E-REV. “In all my time at this company, I’ve never known us talk so openly and so early about a new project,” says another GM staffer, an engineer at the firm’s headquarters in Detroit.
Carmakers usually take extreme measures to keep their new models secret. So if the Ampera, known as the Chevy Volt in America, is so groundbreaking, why have GM’s spin doctors kept it constantly in the press since it was first announced early in 2007, and why are we able to drive a prototype in Europe for the first time when it’s still two years from going on sale?
The answer is that if it hadn’t let customers, financiers and politicians know that the Ampera was on the way, GM might not have had a future at all. Even now, after emerging from bankruptcy protection in the US, building innovative, smaller and cleaner cars like the Volt is central to its recovery plan and the continued support of the Obama administration, now General Motors’ biggest shareholder.
When Rick Wagoner, then GM’s chief executive, went back to Congress to beg for funds for a second time, he’d sold the corporate jet he was lambasted for using on his first visit and instead arrived in a prototype Volt.
In Europe, the same technology is central to persuading someone else to take on GM’s loss-making European brands, Opel and Vauxhall, although GM has recently been signalling that it may not need or want to sell after all; it would certainly rather keep the Ampera’s radical new technology to itself.
The same GM insiders confirm that the rights to the Ampera and its drivetrain are included in the deals currently being negotiated with Magna and RHJ, the two rivals bidders for Opel and Vauxhall, because the car is being developed in both the US and Europe and was intended from the outset to be offered here.
Many in GM believe the Ampera is too good to share, but it can’t use the federal funds keeping it alive in the US to support its overseas operations, even if keeping this important new technology exclusive could reap major rewards in the future. Some analysts interpret GM’s latest delay in committing to a deal as an attempt to buy enough time to retain GM Europe by mortgaging its other non-US operations, especially its profitable Asia-Pacific division, or persuading the German and UK governments to back a bailout deal in which GM retains full ownership.
The technology underpinning this car is as significant as the politics that swirl around it. So how does an E-REV work? The Ampera is always driven by its powerful, 150PS electric motor and can run electrically for up to 60km once its lithium-ion battery has had a full three-hour charge.
After that, a 1.4-litre petrol engine cuts in, but it doesn’t turn the wheels. It’s there purely to charge the battery, operating at constant revs and allowing the Ampera to drive on for up to 500km before its 15-litre tank needs filled.
GM reckons that 80 per cent of European drivers do less than 50km each day, meaning that most days they’ll drive purely on tailpipe-emissions- free electric power at around one-fifth the cost of petrol.
And how will that feel? Pretty good, to judge by this prototype. Even by the standards of other electric cars, the Ampera is very refined; the gentle whine and whirr you get from the electric motor and power control module in some others is already largely absent here.
It doesn’t yet feel as quick as the claimed nine-second 0-100km/h time, but it does the electric car trick of pulling strongly, silently and seamlessly from standstill. It felt completely within its abilities at a fast motorway cruise of 130km/h, with more acceleration readily available; top speed is limited to 161km/h.
GM’s engineers wouldn’t let us drive the car until the battery ran low, so we don’t yet know what it’s like to drive with a petrol engine droning away at exactly the same pitch regardless of what your right foot is doing; the same GM engineers admit that it might take a little getting used to.
Then there’s the price; despite early, hopeful and very unofficial speculation that it could be in the high twenties, GM would now prefer you to expect it to start with a four unless you lease the battery separately, an option it is still considering, and which might get the sticker price down to that original target.
For such an early test car, the Opel Ampera is impressively engineered. The production car is still two years away; we don’t doubt that it will be great to drive. But who will be building it, its true impact on GM’s fortunes, and how many of us can afford to buy it are issues that have yet to be resolved.
Factfile Opel Ampera
Engine:150PS, 370Nm AC motor
Transmission:Single reduction gear
Performance:0-100kph: nine seconds (est'd)
Top speed:161kmh
CO2:40g/km
Consumption:1.6l/100km
Weight:1,600kg (est'd)steel
Dimensions:length – 4,404mm; width: 1,798mm; height: 1,430mm
Boot space:300 litres
Fuel tank:15 litres
Price:€40,000
On sale in Ireland:2012