Plug n Go! The Vauxhall Ampera is a plug-in electric vehicle with a Plan B. Andy Enright reports. It’s fair to say that we haven’t exactly been falling over ourselves to buy electric vehicles (EVs). This slow take up isn’t due to any inherent aversion to the concept, but rather the fact that the products and the pricing haven’t done enough to appeal. By far the biggest issue most prospective buyers have with the products is that of available range. Even in a bestcase scenario, an EV that can only manage around 100 miles and then require a lengthy charge just isn’t a practical solution for stress-free family motoring. But Vauxhall now have a vehicle that offers the zero local emissions of an EV with the range of a normal family car. It’s called the Ampera and it might just be the cleverest car I’ve ever driven. The Ampera is, in effect, two cars in one. It has the big, floor-mounted battery pack of a pure EV but backs that up with an 86bhp 1.4-litre ECOTEC petrol engine under the bonnet. You can plug it into the mains for a three hour charge and you can put petrol in it in the time honoured tradition. Its how these two systems work hand in hand that’s so intriguing.
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The batteries are good for a range of 50 miles or so. When the battery is depleted, rather than the petrol engine chugging into life and driving the front wheels, something rather remarkable happens. The engine drives one of the two electric motors, so the Ampera still feels exactly like an electric car. Performance is certainly brisk, with 60mph arriving in 8.5 seconds and although it’s quite a heavy car, handling is reasonably good. It rides on an adapted version of the Astra’s chassis and refinement is a strong point. In fact, so quiet is the Ampera that there’s a stalk-mounted chirper to warn pedestrians or cyclists of your approach. Practicality isn’t at all bad, and the build quality is better than you’d expect for a family hatch with a mainstream badge. The Ampera’s £28,995 price tag (inclusive of plug-in car grant) might at first seem somewhat steep, but once you’ve sampled the complexity and ingenuity of the product, it certainly seems to offer better value for money than similarly-priced but simpler ‘rivals’. It’s hard to know exactly what to compare it to because there’s nothing like it. It would be unfair to compare it to a pure EV like a Nissan LEAF or a Renault Fluence Z.E., chiefly because the Ampera has the massive practical advantage of its internal combustion engine.
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