Ampera Archives - cars & life blog

How to charge your electric car for free? This is one of the biggest question silently goes around everyone’s head, who are planning to buy an electric car.

Some of the electric cars come with on-board generator like Opel Ampera, so you don’t need to find a socket to plug your car. But you will still use petrol to charge your car, that’s the problem. And some electric cars come with nothing more than batteries and no generator on-board. So, you have to find a plug to charge your car.

Using electricity to charge your car might be cheap in UK, but there is a global perspective. In many countries electricity is very expensive and people try to reduce their electcity consumption in many different ways. For those people, charging their own car from their house is not a very brilliant idea! If someone is trying to reduce electricity consumption by replacing light bulbs, you cannot sell them an electric car! This is the ugly truth.

So what to do? There are couple of tricky ways to charge an electric car for free. You can visit your friend and plug your car to their socket and you will be the loneliest person on this planet surrounded by six billion people. This option is not very plausible and a bad attitude. Another option is to visit a university campus and try to charge your car for free. In some universities they offer free chargers but not in every university so keep in mind. There are some other ways to charge an electric for free but you may end up in police station very quickly.

The fundamental solution to charging an electric car for free is to have a solar panel installed at your home. Sun is free and solar panels transfer the sun light into electricity. Of course they do have limitations; solar panels provide the best efficiency at 25 degrees Celsius. Extreme hot and extreme cold reduce their performance but still you will have the free electricity.

You may find solar panel instalment is a very good solution but it is not cheap as well. When you invest a serious amount of money to an electric car, you will not be happy with the price solar panels.

My suggestion, automotive industry should create funds to provide free solar panels to customers who buy electric cars. However, creating a fund for solar panels is not easy. There should be a government incentive and automotive industry should be motivated as well. I have some doubts about that, because automotive industry is designed to take money not to cash-back to customers. Finance industry does this very well, give money and take it back ;)

But the solar panels are one of the most fundamental parts of the electric cars. Without providing free electricity, why people should buy electric cars?

Another solution is, automotive industry can manufacture solar panel but it won’t go well.

Back to basic, make a contract with solar panel companies and provide them for free to customers. Thus, motivation to buy an electric will dramatically increase. I don’t think anyone will say no to free electricity :)

Will it come true?

Vauxhall Ampera or Opel Ampera, I was waiting for this car for quite long time. I know, I do sound a bit funny, why I should wait a Vauxhall/Opel? Actually, Ampera is the electric car of the Vauxhall/Opel, that’s right they made an electric car that looks like a proper car and with an on-board generator.

You might be thinking there are plenty of electric cars why Ampera is different. Most of the electric cars do not have an on-board generator to charge the batteries, but Ampera does have one. And do not confuse with hybrid technology. In hybrid technology, petrol engine is also connected to wheels but with Ampera, the petrol engine is not connected to wheels and is only designed to charge the batteries when they are out of charge.

The most fundamental problem of electric cars is the charging for long journeys and with the Ampera, you don’t have to worry about this. You can drive as much as you want, until your tank is empty. Or you can charge the Ampera with any electric socket, board computer shows you the estimated charging time.

Today I had opportunity to drive the Ampera with pure electricity. And it was a bit different than the normal driving experience. First of all, when you start the engine there are no engine noise at all. Ampera is more silent than many laptops!

Driving the Ampera is no different from an automatic car, just move the gear lever into Drive position and depress the throttle. As soon as you depress the throttle, you will feel the torque instantly. The electric motors have an advantage, they can deliver their maximum torque instantly. Ampera accelerates much better than many other cars, consumption is nearly to nothing. Interior comfort is much better than any other Vauxhall/Opel vehicle, sorry to say this. And Ampera features two screens, one for instrument panel and one for navigation. And both them offers very clear image, this is really important with screens.

Honestly, I was expecting a dull driving experience with a senseless steering wheel but it was totally the opposite. I had so much fun! Even though, I don’t like to drive car. Ampera is the future, until we have the hydrogen cars. You experience the electric power without worrying about the battery, this is what customers want!

However, there is a minor problem. Button on the central console are touch sensitive and it makes your life very hard while driving. With touch sensitive button, there are feedback from the button and you cannot be sure whether you pressed it or not. And also, accidental touch is unavoidable.

In general, I couldn’t find anything really annoying with Ampera. If I had the money, I would definitely ordered one today. It is fun, it very economical, it looks very good and it does offer a better experience than any other Vauxhall/Opel. You might be thinking, what about Fisker Karma? Fisker Karma is a luxury electric car with on-board generator and yes it does look better than Ampera and at them same time, more expensive.

Ampera is powered by a 73 PS electric motor, fuel is electric but you need to fill up petrol for generator. Fuel consumption is 1.3 lt/km (217.3 mpg) for extra-urban, 0.9 lt/km (315.9 mpg) for urban and 1.2 lt/km (235.4 mpg) for combined. And CO2 emission is only 27 gr/km.

Ampera Electron features;

Driver’s and front passenger’s airbags

Front seat side-impact airbags

Full-size curtain airbags

Driver’s and front passenger’s knee airbags

Electronic Stability Programme (ESP) with traction control and Emergency Brake Assist

Anti-lock Braking System (ABS)

CD/MP3 CD player with stereo radio

DAB digital radio

USB connection with iPod control

Aux-in socket

Hands-free mobile phone system with Bluetooth®

Multi-function trip computer

Electronic Climate Control (ECC)

Cruise control

Automatic lighting control

LED daytime running lights

Electric parking brake

Electrically operated front and rear windows

Electrically adjustable/heated door mirrors

17-inch five-Y-spoke alloy wheels with aero covers

Remote control security alarm

Leather seat facings with electrically heated front seats

Leather-covered steering wheel

Front and rear parking distance sensors

Rear view camera

Sat nav/DVD player

Sat nav system with voice activation

‘Pseudo 3D’ street level mapping for 20 European countries

Audio/video DVD player

Hard Drive Device (HDD) with 30GB music file capacity

Bose® ‘Energy Efficient Series’ sound system with six high-performance speakers and single subwoofer