Volt may lose its european brother: Ampera discontinued?

Not with the virtual onslaught of European EVs that have suddenly appeared. And Europe is a little more compact than the US. As my Dad said when we lived in England, from the center, drive 50 miles in any direction and you'll drown.

 

Plug in markets for the second half of this decade should be best in

1) US
2) China (from 3 today)
then a distant
3) Japan (2 today, but china is accelerating)

Each of the European countries seem to be there own market for plug-ins, most sharing the euro and nedc tests but not much else.

Most have much better incentives for bevs than phevs. I don't think the loss of the ampera means that much. GM can still try to sell volts in Europe in the 2016 my and later. Making a more Chinese version makes sense.

IIRC Holland is the only Euorpean country that buys a lot of phevs and the volt is available there as well as the ampera.

 

Over here Chevrolet are being pulled as a brand shortly so the Volt will be history. The Opel/Vauxhall Ampera is way way way overpriced for what it is, and has always been so. It was either a compliance car or was deliberately overpriced so as not to sell in any number and thus could be discontinued after 4 years. Probably both.

Same as the Ford Focus EV. It was released nearly a year ago, but you'd never guess. It's not in any Ford showrooms, it's hidden on the Ford.co.uk website and can only be found if you know what to look for - seeking it out. Select the 'cars' option and you'll get a list of all the UK Fords that are sold, including the Focus. But the Focus EV can only be found by scrolling to the foot of the page and selecting it that way. Hardly pushing it. It too is way overpriced compared to the competition.

So Ford and GM are not really pushing their EV offerings? lol there's a surprise.

 

GM needed to stop selling Chevy in Europe or close the local brands there. Selling both in the same market would lead to the same problems they had in the US when old GM had Pontiac and Saturn and Oldsmobile further back.

Isn't the too expensive problem for these cars due to import fees, at least in part? Nissan seems to be the only company making their plug in locally for the market. Is the Leaf as overpriced as the Volt, PPI, and others in comparison.

 

I didn't know that. I knew chevy was losing lots of money in europe so that makes sense.

This makes pulling the ampera make less sense though unless in europe its to replace it with the gen II opel volt?

 

There's a 10% duty for cars made outside the EU including the Prius. I'll give some price comparisons below so you can see how the Ampera compares to the competition. Be aware the prices are UK prices including our 20% vat. Some EU countries have higher rates, some lower.

Base Leaf £21,500 (after £5,000 grant)
Base Prius £22,000 (similar spec to US Prius 3)
Base BMW i3 £25,680 (after £5,000 grant)
Original Leaf 1.0 fully loaded £26,000 (after £5k grant)
Base PIP £27,300 (after £5k grant )
Base Mitsubishi Outlander £28,250 (after £5k)
Base Mitsubishi i-miev £28,499 (after grant)
Base Ford Focus EV £28,580 (after £5k)
Base Ampera £28,750 (after £5k)
Base Tesla S UK Spec RHD £50,280 (after £5k grant)

All these prices were collected today and you're welcome to check. As you can see, the Ford & GM are both at the top end of the pricing bracket. The Mitsubishi i-miev is also silly money to buy, though has good lease deals and second hand examples with only a thousand miles or two go for £10k or less.

 

For context, I believe the Ampera/Volt is rated as 5.0 liters per 100km on the NEDC combined cycle on gasoline alone. This is about 47 mpg (US) or 56 mpg (Imperial).

A quick check shows that this is about the same as the conventional gasoline model estimates for the Toyota Yaris. According Toyota.ie, the non-hybrid 1.0 liter Yaris gets 59 mpg (Imperial) and the 1.33 gets 54-55 mpg. The gasoline Corolla gets 50-51 mpg.

I don't think the Ampera's gas-only mpg is all that terrible. It would be nice if it were better but it is likely the same or better than most European gasoline cars just as it is in the US market. One might think that it's 40+ mile EV range (NEDC 52 miles EV range on 2011 and likely about 58 for a 2015 Ampera) would work even better at reducing need for the gas engine in Europe's shorter distance driving.

 

The problem with Europe is diesel is so much cheaper than gas than makes the Ampera not important. You could be driving a Jetta TDI for so much cheaper than an Ampera/Volt.

The only reason people get these cars are so they get a cheap car after major Gov incentives like in Netherlands, or go into city center with extra fees like London.

 

The outlander phev seems to sell fine in europe, but that is mainly the netherlands
Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV selling well in Netherlands
Norway has changed their tax policy to not penalize phevs, but many european countries tax policy is not positive for phevs. German taxes definitely encourgage diesels. Norway and france, pure bevs.

I expect the outlander phev and i3+rex will combine to take most of the sales that would have gone to the ampera. In Holland the outlander, in germany the i3 and upcoming vw phevs.

 

I added to your list here a close conversion of the UK price to US dollars, minus the VAT and import duty(I assume the Leaf and i3 price weren't subject to the 10% import duty, plus I used the Volt price for the Ampera), in blue. The current US price is in this color, which probably named after some type of food.

Base Leaf £21,500 (after £5,000 grant) $30.6k $21,480(after $7500 fed tax credit)
Base Prius £22,000 (similar spec to US Prius 3) $28.9k $25,765
Base BMW i3 £25,680 (after £5,000 grant) $36.5k $41,350
Original Leaf 1.0 fully loaded £26,000 (after £5k grant)
Base PIP £27,300 (after £5k grant ) $35.8k $29,990
Base Mitsubishi Outlander £28,250 (after £5k)
Base Mitsubishi i-miev £28,499 (after grant) $37.4k $15,495(after credit)
Base Ford Focus EV £28,580 (after £5k) $37.5k $35,170
Base Ampera £28,750 (after £5k) $37.7k $26,670(after credit)
Base Tesla S UK Spec RHD £50,280 (after £5k grant) $65.9k $63,570(after credit)

The iMiEV price is nuts over there.

It appears that Nissan, Toyota, Ford, and GM are gaming your grant for extra profit. The flipside to that statement is that it is more important to sell cars here and/or the profits are from a larger number of sales.

The i3 is close in price once the credit is factored in to the US price. Same with the Tesla, and eyeballing the difference them around the difference in the Prius prices.

So in most cases it appears the plug in car is priced higher by around the amount of the UK grant. Assuming the brands in question don't normally overcharge on a model in comparison to the US prices.

 

Yep!

Welcome to the world of subsidy. The same phenom was on full display in the 'cash for clunkers' American program a couple of years ago, and can be seen in residential PV installations today. I have read that Economists estimate that half of a subsidy goes to the end consumer and half upstream but I am skeptical whether the consumer ends up even getting 25%.

 

Absolutely. That's why the grant is likely to be pulled early.

The prices in the UK and the US compare within about a grand once duty and vat are removed. The PIP and the Ampera were all about £5,000 more than they should have been, which was quite odd considering the grant was £5,000. The original Leaf actually matched the cost in the US and it was that discrepancy that confirmed my concerns.

Taking the PIP, the gross cost not taking the incentive into account was £33,000 or £7,000 more than the similar specced non plug in. Minus £2,000 off that to 'remove' the cost of the HV battery in the normal Prius would indicate the PIP battery alone cost £9,000. You and I know that is rubbish. Remove the £5,000 and you're left with £4,000 for the 5 kwh PIP battery. Still high but certainly more realistic. Then the news came out that the Leaf battery costs about £4,000 for a 24 kwh battery. That now makes the PIP costs totally way over the top.

 

And Ireland is a lot more expensive than UK, hence I have bought my last 5 cars in the UK

 

Selling and inventory costs are much higher in europe. I don't think they are making extra profits given at least Ford, GM don't make a profit in the EU15 + Norway. GM has been bleeding like crazy.

Opel Group to manage GM's European business | The Detroit News

I'm sure spending marketing dollars in Germany for the ampera, and selling less than ferari there, doesn't help slow the losses. Every year GM says they will reduce losses, and every year there is more red ink.

Ford is a little better off. It cut last years loss in half, and may actually be profitable in europe next year.
Ford Motor Company First Quarter 2014 Financial Results


Now with Japans devaluation of the yen Toyota does appear profitable, but they lost money on the car business from 2008-2013. 2013 Toyota claimed european profits, but they got there by adding profits outside of europe and from banking to overcome losses from european car sales.

 

insideevs got this later than us, but do have one other bit of news.
Opel Ampera To Be Discontinued When Next-Gen Chevy Volt Gets Released

which links to this, an opel version of the next gen spark bev
Report: Opel To Launch Fully Electric Vehicle In Next 2.5 Years

 

The exchange rate you used is not correct.
£1 = US$1.709

Base Leaf £21,500 (after £5,000 grant) = 21.500 x 1.706 = US$36,679

 

...as far as 20% VAT, the U.S. also has state taxes + annual local car taxes that vary from 0% in Oregon up to approaching 15-20% total car taxes in states like CA, AZ, ME, VA...so when we compare prices we should also compare before taxes.

 

Oh heck what've I started? The prices I quoted were not converted into $'s for a reason. They were purely to show how much higher up the scale the UK Ampera is compared to the competition. Then our American or Canadian friends could simply compare their local price of such vehicles and if the Volt is a quarter more expensive than a Leaf, then the pricing compares to ours. If not, then there's the problem.

Personally I'm not bothered. I don't like the Ampera as it's just a compliance car. To use a Yorkshire-ism, it's "somat or nowt", something or nothing. It's not an EV and it's not an economical car. The similar sized 5 seater Vauxhall Insignia gets better mpg's and costs £16,500 or HALF the gross cost of the Ampera. OK it's a manual at that price but the official mpg's are higher.

If the Ampera was priced at £25,000 - £5,000 grant, then it would have sold, but that was never the idea was it