Finding the chase and cutting to it

As part of the Adastral Park Electric Vehicle showcase, I borrowed a Vauxhall Ampera as a demonstrator for the day.

At first glance, on paper, the Ampera looks like a hybrid, yet the petrol engine included with the Ampera does not drive the wheels of this great looking car.  Instead, the “engine” acts as an electrical generator feeding extra electrons into the lithium-ion batteries supplying the Ampera’s electric motors.

In practice, this makes for a civilised driving experience.  The cabin is sound proofed in a way our Nissan Leaf doesn’t need to be and it’s really hard to notice when the engine is running.  There are no gears like the Leaf, so acceleration is smooth and instantaneous, yet the range is over 300 miles when the petrol tank is full.  Different driving modes are accessed from a button on the fascia.  These include “normal”, “sport”, “hold” and “mountain”.  Normal runs the car economically as an electric car (equivalent to “brake” mode on the Leaf) and Sport is electric with less regenerative braking.  Hold and mountain both engage the petrol generator to either maintain battery charge level or allow more power to be provided to go up a hill.  Otherwise, the generator will come on when the battery has reached a factory set low level.

In my case, I never put any petrol in from arrival of the car, so it hovered round the 136mile mark and I topped up the battery both at work and at home.  At work, I used the 3-pin plug charging cable at the pod-point at work and at home it used the normal Mennekes type 2 I use with the Leaf – the British Gas install charge point worked beautifully although it does look different to the Leaf with the connector’s different surround it is completely standard and charged quickly off our solar cells.

The battery is not huge, even really trying, my journey to work consumed a third of the battery.  True, I don’t have to charge at work with the petrol, but that’s not really the point.

The layout of the cabin is much more traditional than the Leaf, with a lever for the “gear” selector: park at the top followed by reverse and then neutral and then drive and low gear.  This translates in terms of the Leaf’s drive and brake modes.

One of the biggest disappointments is that the cabin does not seem to be designed for as a right hand drive model.  For example, the parking brake is to the left of the main console just above the gear selector.  This distracts from an otherwise serene environment.  Or at least I thought so driving it.  On providing my son a lift, he was not impressed with the red patterned fascia trim.

The boot was the biggest shock: it was large and had space for the charging cable under the boot floor (which the Leaf lacks) but there was no rear shelf – so although it was a hatch-back you had to peel back the cloth boot cover which protects the contents from the sun and prying eyes.

Entertainment wise, this car is packed.  The £37,000 version has everything including DAB with a pause function – need to take a call, no worries, pull over, pause the live radio and rejoin the programme you left before rejoining the carriage way!  Beware though, if you want the satnav displayed on the screen, the radio has to be on although we found that choosing an empty source meant you could enjoy the sat nav at lights without having to endure anything while moving.  There is also a DVD player, which is useful to read the manual on while parked up.

I didn’t mind the touch screen controls although I have spoken to a few people who found them a little annoying.  What was difficult was achieving the basics like turning off the aircon’.  I managed it in the end but the user interface is a little clunky.

Parking it in the garage was no trivial – unlike the Tesla Model S and the Nissan Leaf the Ampera doesn’t even have folding mirrors as an option.  This is strange as by far the cheapest way to run it is through charging it at home rather than filling it with petrol.  Maybe in America garage doors are much wider.

So?

I wouldn’t swap the Leaf for it per se, but if range were an issue it’s a much better option than a Honda Insight and much cheaper than a Tesla Model S.  It has a much softer, less sporty ride than the Leaf but the front spoiler was not a great edition in town (especially with speed bumps).

Were money no object…