GM declares Ampera e-car 'production ready' General Motors will show off what it calls the "production ready" Vauxhall Ampera at the Geneva Motor Show this week - even though the e-car won't actually go on sale here for another ten months. GM will price the Ampera at a whopping £33,995, though Brits will get £5000 of that paid by the government. And buyers won't have to …
FFS, can they actually run this through a tunnel for once?
An example of how far can you go starting from the same ugly vectra roots - the new SAAB.
I am willing to bet a case of beer that it has a lower drag coefficient than this "enviromentally friendly vehicle". This is outright silly because GM definitely has way more resources than a minor sports car manufacturer which has taken over a bankrupt ex-GM subsidiary.
Means "Brits will get £5000 of that paid by other British taxpayers", i.e. this is what the VAT hike pays for.
When will people realize that governments have no money of their own. All they can ever do is redistribute our money. Personally I'd prefer to keep my money & redistribute it as I want.
That's fine Steve, but I do hope you realise how much of your cash you'll have to redistribute to buy land and tarmac it to drive your car :)
I read somewhere that a recent motorway re-surfacing cost £1M per lane per mile, and that was with the land already owned and with the foundations already in place!
Meh! Who needs tarmac? :)
Seriously, though, that's not quite the same thing. There's a world of difference between paying a basic level of tax to fund infrastructure that we could never realistically manage individually, and subsiding individual purchases as a way to influence behaviour.
Of course it used to be simpler, in the days where anyone owning a car paid a Road Fund licence, which paid for the roads. Once it became clear that total income from road users was 10x the money actually spend on the roads that model became untenable, though...
If in encourages the market *enough* to encourage the construction of a widespread charging network.
If the batteries were made (or even re-cycled. AFAIK UK batteries are sent to France at present) in UK factories.
It depends what the *long* term goal of this policy is.
Otherwise they might as well re-introduce the car scrappage scheme.
I'm glad to see electric / hybrid vehicles becoming more mainstream. What I don't like is how ugly many of them are.
This Ampera really looks like it fell from the top of the ugly tree with a horrible grill and bizarre trim around the windows. Worst part is the chassis which looks like it is sunk about 4 inches lower than a normal vehicle, probably to hold batteries. This low slung look might be great on a smooth roads. What happens when you hit a pothole, drive through a puddle or run over some debris?
I wish EV makers would just produce a nice but ordinary looking car. They don't need some quasi futuristic exterior, just something which could be compared against a regular vehicle and not look weird for it.
Much better. Not sure I like the style but I wouldn't think it would look out of place vs other saloons.
I think these Volt / Ampera cars are so low slung it completely throws out the proportions of the doors, grille, windows. That might explain the ugly black masking around the window - an attempt to make the window look bigger than it is. The grille is just weird. I wonder if the doors open closer to the ground and what hilarity would follow if you park up against a kerb.
Isn't the Ampera the European version of the Chevy Volt? If so, is it that different then the Volt? If not, why is it presented like some sort of a new car, when the Volt is already in production?
Also, regarding Ampera's range between visits to the petrol station, my lowly Citroen Xsara Picasso Diesel does between 600 and 800 miles to the tank. I am all for new technology, but please don't promote it based on its weak points - it's rather, well, pointless.
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