Comments on: Volt Birth Watch 162: Vauxhall Ampera Driven! Ish.

By: davejay

davejay — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:41:29 +0000

GM would do/would have done well to adopt the Opel’s lightning bolt logo in the US for the Volt and any future electric models.

By: charly

charly — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:36:22 +0000

Sum of Toyota Priuses sold in the Netherlands in August 2009:

1364.

Which makes the Prius the top selling car in Holland. It has to do with the taxman and i wouldn’t want to claim that the German taxman is playing favorite to the German carmakers but i would be surprised if it wasn’t. Ampera will be a German car so i expect a more friendly enviroment for it than the Prius.

By: panzerfaust

panzerfaust — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:25:05 +0000

The cars in “Transformers” look like they came off the showroom floor and the cars heading for the showroom floor look like characters from “Transformers.”

By: Luke42

Luke42 — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:56:58 +0000

Mirko Reinhardt,
As compared to the car the typical UK family drives (gaged by looking at the parking lots in the Lake District and in Scotland when I was there in 2005), the Prius is slightly bigger and a lot more expensive.

If we could get diesel-powered Vauxhall Corsas here, the Prius probably wouldn’t be such a hot seller here, either. But since it’s just about the only currently-produced car in the US that gets 50-ish MPG with a useful carrying capacity, it’s a winner. I spent the whole trip bitching about how American car companies were sending the practical little cars that I like to Europe, and only selling overpowered blingmobiles at home. GM and Ford make money building great small cars — they’ve just chosen not to sell them at home.

Also, paying ~$8/gal (1£/L) sucked.

I’m rooting for the Volt and the Ampera, but the jury’s still out until I can drive one at my local Chevy dealer.

By: Mirko Reinhardt

Mirko Reinhardt — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:58:10 +0000

@ScottMcG :
it’s going to do a lot worse as a 40k-euro economy car where they’ve already got really efficient diesels and don’t seem to have adopted hybrids the way we have.

Sum of Toyota Priuses sold in Germany in July 2009:

549.

That’s not even enough to put it in the “Top 100″ list of best selling cars in Germany.
And yet, July 2009 was the second best month for the Prius in Germany ever. Normally it sells about 300/month, with May 2009 being exceptionally bad at 86 Prii sold.

But hey, let me write a press release for Toyota:

BREAKING NEWS:

July 2009, Germany
We’re proud to announce that July 2009 has been the most successful month for the smug Prius in the land of Wurst and Bier – ze germans bought five hundred and fourty nine of them, which means for the second month ever we sold more Priuses than Volkswagen sells their popular Phaeton sedan.

On a related note: Auto Bild gave the new Prius a very positive four star review.

Ain’t gonna help though.

So, the Ampera – expensive Opels stopped selling well in the late 1970s. I’m not holding my breath for this to change.

By: jpcavanaugh

jpcavanaugh — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:29:01 +0000

If cars could cry, they would look like this.

By: ScottMcG

ScottMcG — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:43:33 +0000

So how’s that going to work once GM sells Opel, anyway? While the development has been happening at the Tech center in Warren, what work has been done on the car in Europe? I mean, besides designing a better exterior and interior than the one we’ll be seeing over here.

Will GM sell the car to Opel, or license them to build it? Will anybody even care? My guess is that however badly it does in the US (and that’s probably quite badly indeed), it’s going to do a lot worse as a 40k-euro economy car where they’ve already got really efficient diesels and don’t seem to have adopted hybrids the way we have.

Does anybody really think that this car is going to make it to market?