Vauxhall have proudly and hopefully introduced a new car at the Geneva car show. They claim that the Ampera, which runs off electricity, could go a long way to fulfilling Gordon Brown’s ambition of making the UK the ‘electric car capital of Europe’.

The car is charged from the mains and stored in a 16 kilowatt lithium-ion battery. An overnight charge from the mains, which will cost just one pound, is sufficient to take you 40 miles using just the battery power.

For longer trips you can achieve a further 260 miles by using the petrol-driven generator which is under the bonnet. Whilst driving on electricity from the battery, there is zero carbon dioxide emission. It is predicted that the Ampera will cost around a fifth the current cost per mile of a comparable petrol-engined car.

Vauxhall has plans to put the car into production at plant in Ellesmere Port, which employs 5,000 staff. They would switch from a short working week to 3 full shifts, 5 days a week.

Vauxhall’s owners, GM, are asking ministers to back a network of plug-in charging points to help the push for electric cars.
Business Secretary Peter Mandelson gave a positive response on a visit to the show, saying he though Ellesmere Port is a brilliant plant, as does GM, and offered assurance that the Government would stand behind it.

Some facts and figures show that the 40 miles of zero carbon driving, at all speeds, is around 10 miles more than 80 per cent of drivers travel in a day.

A full charge from a domestic socket will take 3 hours. Performance is 0-60 in 9 seconds with a top speed of 100mph
This is the vehicle being billed as one which could rescue the British car industry from the brink of disaster. At a cost of 20,000 pounds it’s hoped that it’ll be a leader for electric cars and a saviour for thousands of jobs.

The Ampera is scheduled to go into production this September and should be in the showrooms in 2012.

.