Chevrolet Volt (Vauxhall/Opel Ampera) Now I want one! EV or Hybrid?
Well, this one’s going to be a head scratcher cuz is this an electric car or is it a hybrid? I think that’s going to be the main discussion point for today. I’m driving a Chevrolet Vault sold here in Europe also as a Vauxil Ampera or an Opal Ampera in Europe or a Holden Vault over in Australia. They didn’t sell many over there. It is bafflingly clever. It is stupendously clever. I can’t pretend to really understand any of it. It’s got combustion engine. It’s got two electric motors and some or all of that make it go down the road. Very, very clever. The Chevrolet Vault, which I think looks fantastic, by the way, uh was launched in 2010 um after a concept that I think was first seen in 2008 and uh a very very clever electric car range extender. That’s always how General Motors presented it. It was never a hybrid. uh they were actually quite vehemently not a hybrid and they wouldn’t even admit that actually the engine can drive the car forward. Primarily though that engine is connected to a generator and it generates um electricity for the battery pack. It’s a 16 kWh battery pack. It’s in a T-shape. Uh it goes right down the center of the car as we’ll see in a bit. Uh and uh it’s got a range of maybe 35 miles. um electric only and then when the battery charge gets too low, the engine kicks in, charges the battery and uh if you start really hammering it, the revs will go up. So, it puts more power in to um keep you going down the road. Uh there are various different modes as well which do different things we’ll get into, but primarily an American car uh built in America, sold here as a Chevrolet because we had Chevrolet on the market at the time. uh primarily selling cars from Korea, South Korea, what was Deu. Uh so it’s cars like the Letti, the Epica, the Cruz on which this is quite heavily based. But uh yeah, it’s a very American take it. General Motors had a lot of money from the Obama administration to save themselves and a lot of promise was put on this car. promise it never really achieved because while being exceedingly clever and actually really really good, it was quite expensive and a lot of people still like we don’t really get it. So the Volt which should not be confused with the Bolt, the Bolt was all electric, the Volt always had a petrol engine. Uh it is a hatchback. We have got some space back here under this giant hatch. as a little cover to try and keep your things secret. It’s not exactly a parcel shelf, is it? So, just the four seats because you’ve got this big tunnel down the middle of the car. It’s not a transmission tunnel. That is part of the battery pack. So, the battery pack is in a T-shape. It comes along there and goes along behind the back seats. 16 kW hours. I don’t know what we got under here. a false floor uh tire inflator uh because uh yeah, there is no tire. But uh some useful additional space down there. Got little cubbies in here as well. Wonder what they do. Uh and uh yeah, like I say, this is your um load cover. It’s fiddly in the extreme, but there we are. Kind of attached. Uh so a very shallow boot really. Quite a high lip as well. But probably need to look at the power end cuz that’s where all the interesting stuff is. I bet you can’t see anything. Yeah. Um plastic. You can’t see any of the cleverness. But it’s a 1.4 L uh petrol engine, four-cylinder, non-turbo. Um about 80 brake horsepower, I think. So quite dated. And then the Voltec is your cleverness. So, this is a first generation Voltec. And like I say, we’ve got a motor on the end of the gearbox. So, most of the time, uh, it’s just using a single electric motor to provide propulsion. It can use that generator for extra electric shove if it needs it. And, uh, if it really needs it, the engine can fire up and drive through the generator to, um, effectively create power across all three. There is no gearbox. It’s not like a Prius. A Prius has a CVT gearbox, so it can have direct drive to the wheels. The the power plant on this always powers through the electric motor, but it might actually be assisting the electric motor. So, what I’m clumsily trying to say is that this really is an electric car with an engine, uh, not a petrol car like most hybrids that’s being assisted by the electric motor. It’s a very, very different way of doing things. Very clever. But uh I guess the real question is does it actually deliver any real benefits? Um I mean if you if you’re only doing 40 miles a day then you’re doing that all on electric power. You can charge it at home on just your 13 amp plug. Take about 6 hours to charge the battery fully and you’ve no need to fire the engine up at all. Uh the uh complication comes when you’re driving further, but it should be able to average 45 MPG, maybe even 50, which for a big lump of car like that with a petrol engine is not bad going at all. Uh and it gives you that electric driving experience without the threat because it’s got a petrol range. Um the combined range is over 300 miles. So you haven’t got that ra range anxiety fear that you would from an electric car of this era. Uh this car itself dates from 2012. So it’s quite near the start of production. But uh there were never a huge seller here. I think 10,000 units were sold uh in Europe. So across the whole of Europe. That’s terrible. But I think pricing was very much the problem here. Let’s just drink in the style a bit more though. Uh this one’s a little dirty. is a daily driver and uh it’s been very wet so very very mucky of late. Single reverse and fog light down the bottom here and uh tiny little clusters. No rear wiper which is annoying. Uh you won’t get spray because it’s a notchback design, but still that’s a wet rear window. You can’t easily see out of it. Uh note how this top half is blocked off mostly so you don’t scorch your rear passengers. But yeah, the styling has always been very appealing to me. Um, here is our fuel fill or our electric fill rather, I think. Oh, maybe I need the button for that. Yeah. So, press the button. So, there we go. It’s a type two connector effectively. It’s a slightly different style to most cars, but uh the cable on this car you can plug into your 13 amp plug. Uh you could use um public chargers if you wanted to, but you would have to buy a cable. Uh cables are available for about 80 100 quid that will enable you to plug that into a type two charger. So not the rapid chargers. Uh what’s known as the fast chargers. Front end perhaps a bit fussy. I think the uh Vauxil and Opal versions are actually a bit neater. Uh got a fake grill because don’t really need a grill and uh a very low front end. It seems a little vulnerable, but I’ve always liked the look of them. And if you’ve watched World’s End, uh, the last of the uh, Cornetto trilogy films by Simon Peg and Edgar Wright, every driveway in this in that film has a Vauxil lamper on it. So, there’s a fun fact for you. But, let’s go and uh, head in. And uh, it’s a bit wow in your face. We got these bright white door cards. Uh, some aftermarket high voltage mats. I quite like that. So, your usual things here. Another release for the uh the fuel flap there. Um obviously, you’ve got a regular fuel flap on the back for the petrol engine. It’s about 45 L tank, I do believe. Uh so, there we go. It’s telling me to plug in to charge, but uh we’re not going to do that. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Now, this one’s got 132,000 miles on it, and believe it’s the original battery as well. Um it’s now gone off. So, um let’s press power. Press break to start. Sorry. And now it’s going to get upset cuz I’ve got the door open. There we go. This is quite a high spec, by the way. I’ve noticed it’s got the Bose sound system. I might have a play with that later, but I can’t really share the noise with you for um copyright reasons. So, there we go. There’s our display. And the battery has got a little use. So, we’re down to 22 mi of range. We’re going to go driving and see what happens when you run out. Tire pressure sensors a known issue on this car. Uh it’s lying. So, uh we’ll ignore that. Bright white central dash area, which still looks good after all these years. Much more information here. So, I reckon it’s doing 150 MPG and over its lifetime 78. So, maybe I was being a bit harsh on it. If you’re doing a lot of electric miles, obviously your petrol consumption is going to be minimal, but it does depend on your use. So, uh, we can see a power flow. Woo! Look at that as well. So, that’ll tell you where the power is coming from. That might be fun to keep an eye on as we go down the road, but I’m just going to leave it in that mode for now. We thankfully got buttons for the climate control, the fan of which is quite noisy. It’s quite a noisy system. Uh, hazards. Yeah, fake electronic noises. Uh, different drive modes I’ll get into as we’re driving along. electronic handbrake, gear selector, which is just weirdly hidden away in here, but obviously just comes out. Uh L uh is like a an extra regen mode. It’s more like a B mode uh to a lot of EV users. Uh and uh makes it a little more one pedaly to drive. So if you like regen, L is the one to use. Uh otherwise, yeah, there aren’t actually an awful lot in here, are there? I mean, obviously you got phone call possibility, stereo controls on here. Uh, so I’m going to press that and hopefully that tire pressure message will go away. There we go. And uh, yeah, you keep try and keep that green ball in the middle. Obviously, the harder you accelerate, the more the ball goes up and then it goes back down when you’re braking and getting a bit of regen going on. Uh, got some buttons up here as well for parking sensors, things like that. And, uh, very shallow side windows, I will say. But, uh, these seats actually very comfortable. most un Voxil like, which tells you it isn’t um really a Vauxil. Uh nice bit of storage in there. Twin cup holders. Um some nice storage in there. And that’s how you turn the airbag off if you’ve got a child seat uh in the front. And uh we’ll have a look in the back. Ooh, claustrophobic in the back. I’m going to say my head is in the tailgate. Uh and there’s that shading, which I’m very, very thankful for. And uh I bashed my head coming in as well cuz this is so low. So, uh perhaps that’s why you never saw these as taxis. But, uh there is another 12vt power outlet. It’s currently showing 14 volts because we’re running. Uh no armrest, weirdly. Just straight access to the boot, so I can reach my bag in there. Uh very, very peculiar, but it’s comfortable. It just feels very very claustrophobic. Uh my head is about to wall up about six different items. I don’t know if there’s any adjustment on this seat. It feels like not. So, um cozy. I guess that gives the way that it’s based on um uh the Cruz, which wasn’t a particularly large car. It’s kind of like um probably a bit smaller than a Mondo, but uh yeah, this is definitely definitely um inelegant. H Well, before we get underway, there is the important business of the wiper test. Oh, there we go. We got um clap handers. uh which I generally do like. Uh you sometimes get a dribble of disappointment. We got that going on. But a good wiping pattern overall. It covers a lot of screen. And the unswept area is behind the mirror where I don’t even look. So I’m going to say that was pretty decent. So into L we go. Unsurprisingly drives quite a lot like an electric car. Uh we’ll go this way, I think. Yeah, it gathers pace undramatically. It’s not stupidly quick. It’s not um unnecessarily fast. It gets down the road quite nicely. But uh yeah, the various modes, there’s a hold mode. So, if I want to keep my range for when I’m around town and uh perhaps prioritize engine, I can do that by putting it into hold mode. Uh so, keep going down. That’s hold mode. So, in theory, the engine will now be running to um keep the battery at the right level. Oh, yeah. I can just hear it humming. But of course, the engine speed is now entirely unrelated to my progress down the road. Uh even less so than a daffiamatic. So the engine’s got three or four set speeds where it will just hum away very quietly, far more quietly than the Volkswagen XL1. That That’s another sort of a hybrid, but that’s got what sounds like a cement mixer in it. Oh, we’ve gone up to another position, but now it’s gone back down. I bet you can’t even hear it. That really is quiet. I drove a second generation Prius the other day. Uh didn’t get to film it. Sorry. And uh that that was very quiet and refined when the engine actually cut in. You could hardly hear it. That that wasn’t the engine. That was a lawn mower. So, uh I find this very intriguing. I’m going to put the power flow on. Yeah. So, I can see the engine’s running and it’s putting charge into the battery at the moment. But now it stopped because the um regen was putting power into the uh battery. All very very fascinating stuff. I think we need to go that way. I mean I should probably get around to telling you what the car actually drives like. Um but generally it’s just boringly competent. Uh it doesn’t sparkle. It doesn’t amaze in any way. Uh the steering is quite nicely weighted. Uh that’s about it really. So, at the moment, it’s using battery power. It’s It’s going to keep the battery at the level I want it to be at. That’s why I’m in hold mode. So, uh rather than run the battery down and then engage the engine, uh if I get below where I told it to hold, it will run the engine again. But at the moment, we’re only doing well, we’re slightly naughtly doing 26 mph. We should only be doing 20. Uh so um we’re not using a great amount of power to get down the road as we circle Cardiff airport here on my right. Always quite fascinated by these and actually they are starting to come within range. Um you expect to pay somewhere around 2 and 1/2 3 and 1/2 maybe up to you know four or five for a really nice one. So, uh, they are very sensible money now. And, uh, I mean, listen to how quiet it is. I know I’m only doing 24 miles an hour. Sorry, 20 sign, 23, 22, almost 20 mph. But, uh, refinement seems very high. So, as a stepping stone to full electric, these cars made so much sense. But I guess the price just put people off. And they were like, “Well, I I can just get a normal diesel and it’ll have five seats. I mean, having such a big lump of car, only be a four-seater quite limiting. Even the Nissan Leaf offers five seats. There’s another mode called mountain, and what that tends to do is move up the threshold at which uh it’ll kick in and keep the battery level high, so you’ve always got that shove of power should you need it. Uh it doesn’t unleash any extra power. It doesn’t make you go any faster down the road, but uh it it ensures the battery is kept topped up cuz I think if the battery gets too low, you end up with reduced power because uh that there simply isn’t enough energy left. So, um I guess that’s when it really is using the petrol engine. [Music] Yep. So, the engine’s fired back up again. That is most peculiar because that engine is entirely related to my unrelated rather to my progress down the road other than the fact I’m using more electricity to go a bit quicker. So, he’s having to put some back into the battery. I’m just going to put it back into uh normal drive mode. I It’s an interesting one. If the engine’s only running occasionally in bursts, what’s that doing for um the longevity of the engine? Is it ever actually getting the oil up to temperature? One does wonder. Of course, modern oil is like water anyway. So, uh maybe it heats up quicker. I don’t know. But yeah, it is baffling trying to look at how this works. So, um when you’re going highway speeds, uh the second motor will run down uh and the generator will come in as a power source as well. So, the two electric motors work together, which apparently is more efficient than just having one motor. Uh, I don’t I can’t even pretend to understand it even a little bit, but I mean the overall vibe for me driving it is I feel like I’m driving an electric car. Yeah. So, we use it. The graphic is showing we’re using battery propulsion at the moment, but I’m going to have to put my foot down here. Oh gosh. Yes, that picks up nicely. I think we’re still just on battery power at the moment by the look of it. Little bit of wind noise, but not very much at all really at 60 mph. That’s a shade under 100 km an hour. Oh no. I’m going to have to put one of these on my radar now. Uh battery capacity unsurprisingly is dropping a bit but we are still on battery only power. So um if you go on the forums there’s lots of people different hints and tips what works better for them. You know do you use hold mode? If you’re driving towards a city then probably you do to maximize the amount of battery capacity you’ve got when you get to the city. I guess it depends how accessible your charging solution is. Can you easily charge up at home? Find out if we got good overtaking punch for getting around the tractor. Oh yes. That’s what I like. It’s that um instant torque. That is the best thing about an electric car. No waiting for a gear change. Just torque and you’re away. Uh airplanes to our right here. Uh oh, sorry. Yeah, that was St. Aen where the planes come in for breaking mostly. This is Cardiff airport here. Yeah, Dominic, the owner, hasn’t had this very long, but he did once run one for 2 years and he absolutely loved it. He only got rid because at the time he was moving to a property that wouldn’t have allowed charging. Uh so, um it does render it less practical if you can’t charge it up the range at the moment despite the fact we’re traveling quite merrily down the road. But, uh yeah, let’s put it into hold again. So, we can keep that 18 milesi of range because we are heading towards Cardiff for some city driving. So, now we got engine and battery power. Now, we got engine power. So, does that mean just the engine is driving? Now, we’re in regen. So, the engine’s gone off again. Yeah. So, driving the uh Prius, obviously the engine works a lot more of the time. The Prius has a much smaller battery, so it can only really do a few miles under pure EV conditions. This has got much more electric range. Yeah. So, that graphic suggests we’re now using the engine. So, the engine is driving the generator on the end of it, which is linked by gears to the road wheels. But like I say, there isn’t a conventional gearbox. So, uh it it’s it’s all quite baffling. So, we still got 249 miles of um petrol range. Of course, I’m not using the battery as we’re driving down the road, but if I lift off and coast, especially down a hill towards a stop or whatever, uh I’m putting electric back into the battery, so I can still charge the battery up. It’s just that I’m not using the battery power while we go down the road. So, the engine’s gone off again even though I’m in hold mode. Uh, there’s a lot to take in here, folks. Here we are in Barry Croso Air Barry. [Music] It’s very peculiar. just having the engine revving up to a certain point and then just sort of staying there. Yeah, it kind of just feels like the engine is utterly detached from the road wheels, but nonetheless, that is what is driving us down the road at the moment. How peculiar. Now, one thing that must be interesting is this car’s done 132,000 miles. I wonder how many of those it’s done with the engine running. How many miles on that engine? And I guess so much must just depend on the use the car has had. I don’t know if you can interrogate it and find out, but I guess your overall MPG figure is going to be a good clue. Uh the lower it is, obviously, the more the engine has been used. We’re still on 18 miles, by the way. We’re just gently going along at the moment. So, uh, very gently. I mean, travel lights have changed, mate. Go. Yeah. So, we’re not using a lot of power. It’s acceleration that absolutely destroys your range. So, the more gentle you can be, the more you can keep that green ball in the middle of the dial, uh, the further you can go on electric only power. I guess what’s also impressive, all this is still working. Uh this car is uh um over 10 years old. What is it? 12 years old now. And everything apart from the tire pressure system that seems a bit buggy. Everything is still working. Now, rumor has it that in 2018, uh Chevrolet had not replaced one battery due to degradation. And uh judging by what I’m seeing here, uh there still isn’t many. I mean, part of that is because it’s rated as 16 kWh battery pack, but I believe it’s actually quite a bit larger and just mostly untapped. Uh, which means you don’t get that issue where it takes ages to charge the last little bit up because actually it’s nowhere near capacity. Right. So, we’ve um got on the fast road to Cardiff. Uh we’re driving along motorway speeds doing 70 miles an hour. We’ve done um impressively we’ve done four miles and lost two miles of range. So I can only assume that this car is actually magic. Uh it’s not like we’ve been going down hills or anything to magically create power. Um it’s apparently is just quite efficient. Uh the drag coefficient is slightly worse than a Toyota Prius, but still I think it’s about 28 uh on the drag coefficient uh which is pretty darn good. Anything under.3 is um quite impressive. Oh, we’re down to 15 miles now. So, at some point it may kick the engine back in. I have to say I am liking this a lot. These weren’t even on my radar at all, but suddenly they are. Johnny Smith late break show had a Chevrolet Vault for many years. He was very happy with it. But of course, he is now pure electric when it comes to daily driver. But he still owns a Dodge Charger because the two aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s not like you have to choose electric or petrol burning. You can have both. It’s allowed. And people like me and Johnny are advocates for both forms of propulsion. Uh has it got auto lights? Yes, it has got auto lights. I I assume it’s put them on. Oh, yes, it has. Whoa. Oh, wow. The switch gears blue. That’s awesome. Oh, I like that. Oh, Nissan Bluebird over there. Looks like a premium. Maybe a while back talking to Johnny Smith, uh both me and him on his late break show uh and me on my hubnut channel have driven the uh Nissan Bluebird that Nissan themselves had converted with a Leaf running gear. So uh it was a fully electric Nissan Bluebird. I’ll tell you what, it was really nice. Perfect demonstration of the quality of those cars, but they’re still so peaceful. No trim rattles or anything going down the road. Imagine an electric conversion of a Montego. It’d be awful. Trim rattles galore. And I say that as someone who loves Monteos. Oh, free freeze chunks of battery left. Uh I probably should have gone into battery hold. Ah, so it has a creep. Uh it does creep. Uh I don’t know if there’s a hold mode. I don’t think so, unfortunately. Oh well, that was a rubbish change. See, I told you driving around Cardiff is miserable. The traffic lights just seem to make it all the more miserable. Horrible. But uh anyway, I shall report back. Got incredibly heavily laden Toyota Sienna JDM in front of us at the moment. That’s what that silver box is. Uh obviously on courier duty. Uh we’re still just driving around generally. Uh trying to wind the battery pack down. It’s proving quite difficult. Uh, we still got seven miles of range on the battery. Uh, and it it’s just still driving in EV mode. It feels a bit weird. It’s terrifying seeing seven miles of range, about 7 mi of pure electric range left. Uh, we know we’ve still got 249 mi of range. Uh, with the engine helping along. Cardiff traffic is certainly delivering misery. Uh we still got two miles of range left and uh we’ve managed to pull the average fuel consumption of the car up to over 80 miles to the gallon now over its lifetime. Right. So we’ve now used up all the battery power but uh the engine is still cutting in to charge the battery I think uh just a little bit. So we’re in stop start traffic so it’s not like it sits there with the engine running. uh if um you come to a stop, it cuts the power cuz you’re not using any power. And even now, it’s put enough back into the battery that we’re using battery power to get along. But we haven’t got very much in there at all now. So, um there goes the engine. Engine has just cut in again. [Music] I’d say that’s probably around 2,000 revs maybe it’s holding. But as soon as I ease off and go into regen, the engine shuts off again. So you still get that wonderful electric car driving experience. It’s jolly jolly interesting. Ah, I’ve put it in mountain mode and it’s trying to get the battery back to a higher level. So we are now just sitting there with the engine revving. I I would say that’s a pretty stupid thing to do in all honesty and entirely unnecessary. [Music] Yeah, it’s like driving a truck with a freezer compartment and you’ve got a separate engine that is just powering that. [Music] Yeah, that’s irritating. We’ll just put it back into normal. [Music] Yeah, that’s a lot more peaceful. Well, I have to say I’m getting on for about 50 miles covered in the Chevrolet Volt now. And oh my gosh, I really, really like it because it drives like an electric car. It’s the only car with a petrol engine I’ve ever driven that drives like an electric car, if you know what I mean. Even my Ford Fairmont AU, smooth and lovely as it is, has loads of torque, but you still feel gear changes and stuff like that. This, no, this just wants to be an electric car. The engine runs just long enough to put a little bit of charge in the battery. And then we’re pottering around town, so the engine shuts off and you can potter around, bimling around 20 mph just on electric power, even though it says it’s got no miles of battery left. Yeah, because it doesn’t use for you the full capacity of the battery. It’s just a little bit hidden away, but it can still use. But yeah, really impressed. I I’ve wanted to drive these for a very, very long time. So, huge thanks to Dominic for letting me have a drive in this example, and huge thanks for you for watching. I hope you found that interesting. So, the Chevrolet Vault, Vauxhall or Opal Ampera, or the Holden Vault. Um, they’re all the same thing. They’re all made in America. They’re all very, very interesting. So, thank you for watching. We’ll see you in a future video. Farewell. Screw off my Chevy to the levy with the levy with dry.
Chevrolet were adamant that the Volt is an EV with range extending engine but is that really true? I decided to find out. I wasn’t expecting to like it quite so much! The Chevrolet Volt was sold in the UK as Vauxhall Ampera, the rest of Europe as the Opel Ampera and in Australia as the Holden Volt. They’re all very much the same car.
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