Buzz - 2014 Vauxhall Ampera PHEV

[AndyRKett]

Interesting choice, there is one I sometimes see around my way which is a grey colour, I remember them being very expensive for a Vauxhall when they came out, I also remember them barely selling. I'll be interested to see how you get on with it when the weather improves and through the summer.

 

[StevenRB45]

I liked the idea of these when they came out, is the battery a bit tired or was 40 odd miles all they ever did real world?

I assume you aren't home charging looking at how what you've said? Unless you regularly go to different sites at different distances.

 

[Didge3]

I remember them being very expensive for a Vauxhall when they came out, I also remember them barely selling. I'll be interested to see how you get on with it when the weather improves and through the summer.

They had a list price of about ~£40k , assume with incentives etc they would've been about £35k to buy, they only sold them for 3 years in the UK and not many at that.

I liked the idea of these when they came out, is the battery a bit tired or was 40 odd miles all they ever did real world?

I assume you aren't home charging looking at how what you've said? Unless you regularly go to different sites at different distances.

GM were very careful with the battery management on these, the car looks after the battery primarily and the occupants second...

It has a total 16.5kWh battery of which you can use 10.5kWh, so a lot of it is hidden away to protect the battery, when it is 'empty' it actually will have around 20% left and at 'full' it will be about. 85% charged. There is a famously high mileage Chevrolet Volt in the US named Sparky, I believe, with over 400k miles and no battery degradation. Someone from GM was quoted something along the lines of 'We've accidentally made a car that'll last forever'

Yes I do charge at home every day, unless of course I go away and have no charging option. Its a completely pointless car if you aren't going to charge it, it'd just be very heavy and less aerodynamic Prius, ~45mpg if you just drive it about with a flat battery. Charges on the slowest setting overnight for 9hours off a 3pin plug, can select a higher current and it'll charge from the plug in 6hours but this points more strain on your household electrics. I'm planning on moving in the next 2-3years and will install a proper EV charging point, from a charge point the time to full is 4.5hours.

 

[StevenRB45]

Fair enough really, I know I've been rather vocal on PHEV as a new car choice but this is a much better option than say a 24kwh Leaf at the same age.

Interesting car technically and the combination of a knife and fork tech engine with what sounds like a very conservative battery set up should have it lasting a long time.

 

[Didge3]

Fair enough really, I know I've been rather vocal on PHEV as a new car choice but this is a much better option than say a 24kwh Leaf at the same age.

Interesting car technically and the combination of a knife and fork tech engine with what sounds like a very conservative battery set up should have it lasting a long time.

Well most modern PHEVs are simply worse than Ampera/Volt and I agree they make no sense. The vast majority of them are ICE vehicles that have been adapted as half baked EVs with a 50hp electric motor and a small sub 7kWh battery, so when you want full power from them the ICE is required to start up and they’ll usually do less than 20miles on a good day of battery alone.
Other than the BMW i3 ReX nothing comes close to the Ampera/Volt (which was on sale way back in 2011 in the US), as mentioned the ICE will never fire up unless A) You ask it to, you can set it to hold the charge in the battery for future use (e.g. driving on the motorway and you want to save charge for city driving later on) or B) When the battery is depleted. The electric motor has double the power of the ICE so if you floor it the car will always use electric to accelerate you (even when the battery is discharged it’ll use some of that buffer at the bottom to propel you and then run the ICE at high rpm to quickly recharge)

I could’ve gotten a 30kWh Leaf in budget but I’m completely put off by the lack of battery thermal management leading to high degradation (the Ampera has active battery heating and cooling via coolant lines running through it)
Could’ve scraped a Zoe too but the winter range of both cars wouldn’t reliably take me my 80 mile round trip on a Thursday, the other 4 days of my working week they’d be fine but I just don’t fancy having to stop on my commute to charge even just once a week.

 

[StevenRB45]

As a concept I do wonder what would be more energy efficient...carrying enough battery to do 300 miles at all times. Or one of these built with more modern energy dense cells, a purpose built generator (could be smaller and lighter than the VX mill) with enough fuel to give a combined 400 mile range.

Suppose depends on the relative weight of the additional batteries versus the engine and fuel. a year. 150 miles with the knowledge you aren't stuffed if you can't charge at the end of it would be enough for huge number of people. But instead we have either normal cars...with a big alternator or BEVs that either require a big charger or have marginal ranges.

 

[Didge3]

I wish I could say this has been completely trouble free motoring but of course not.
I'm not sure if I already mentioned why he's called Buzz, about two months into ownership there was a buzzing sound that developed, increased with speed. I immediately assumed wheel bearing, these are quite known to fail early, it uses the same part as an Astra of the same age but being a much heavier car they wear quickly. I didn't get around to doing anything about it for a couple of weeks and thus the name Buzz came to be. I have a year warranty from the dealership so dropped it off and told them suspect wheel bearing. End of the day comes (they had the car from 8am-5pm before I heard anything) "We've solved it, the engine cover was vibrating and making a noise", seems odd to me that the engine cover would be buzzing loud enough to be heard at 70mph when the engine isn't running
Picked the car up and noise still present. Took the car home anyway and had a look myself, engine cover comes off easily and there are two locating pegs at the back which have rubber mounts on them, the garage had wound lots of electrical tape around them and 'solved it'. I took the tape off and put it back, noise was unchanged so absolutely nothing to do with the issue. Noise got worse over the following weeks but was reluctant to take it back to the dealership in case they fob me off again so I dropped it into my usual garage, they agreed wheel bearing, replaced the same day and issue sorted.

Many trouble free months later and one day I plug it in at home and the RCD trips the whole plug circuit. Reset RCD, happens again. Check all connections, happens again. Bit miffed but oh well got petrol for tomorrow so I'll do some research and see what I can find. The next day plug car in and it's fine again, something was damp I expect. Car was fine for a few days and then it happens again, this gets more frequent some days it'll charge others it won't. I take it to a tesco charger when I do a shop, until one day it didn't charge at tesco either, took it home, no charge. From that point on it didn't charge again.

Here lies the problem with EV/PHEV ownership, I'd wager most garages don't know what to do with them, even Vauxhall barely support the Ampera, there are quite literally a handful of Ampera certified Vx garages in the UK, a non certified Vx garage won't look at it. I don't trust the dealership as far as I could throw them at this point and I doubt they'd know where to start. From my research on some forums it's quite common for the charge port on the car to crack and this causes a short when you plug in. The next issue with the Ampera and specifically having one in the UK is parts, they aren't in stock here. Vx will order from Germany for any work they do which takes weeks usually. I find there is a revised charge port with strengthening on the back to prevent this, I can order the genuine GM Chevrolet part from the US for £70 + P&P/Import duty comes to £100.
Anyway 2.5 weeks later part shows up, the charge port isn't too difficult to remove and given its a common failure there are plenty of guides (apparently Vx charge £380 to do this)
I remove the old one and I find 3 hairline cracks



This is looking from the back of the plug, the 5 'bumps' are where the pins sit.
The new part has a blob of... something? on the back which apparently has solved the issue.



Anyway part fitted and its fixed! 25 mins work and £100 part.
I'm positive the dealership would've had the car ages scratching their heads before reluctantly paying Vx to sort it on my behalf which would've been an even longer wait, I'd rather just be £100 out of pocket.
Apologies for the mammoth post, congratulations if you made it all the way through :wave:

 

[Didge3]

Eventually got around to taking a marginally better photo


And the warmer weather coupled with short trips has resulted in more journeys completed on electric alone, I was able to get over 1000 miles from a tank in the end resulting in an average of 154MPG


Of course that's not including the cost of leccy

 

[Didge3]

Well since purchasing the Brava, Buzz has seen less and less use as I slowly came to realise no matter how hard I try I find modern cars boring... Not exclusively EVs, just most modern cars I've owned I tire of after a year or two. My last 'favourite' car was my '98 Saab and now I'm really enjoying driving the Brava.
So having a depreciating asset sat outside doing little made no sense thus I sold him to WBAC yesterday. Got the valuation online, added any damage in advance, and turned up. They gave me exactly what was quoted online and was all done and dusted within 20mins, honestly quite impressed.

Sold for £1400 less than I paid for him ~19,000 miles ago, averaged 108mpg over the entire experience spending almost exactly £1000 fuel, elec bill went up approx £30 a month, £540 in my ownership. So ~£1500 in fuelling or 7p a mile if my maths is correct.
Total cost of ownership is a whole different ball game and now he is out of warranty I also feared any expensive bills would practically write off the car for me, parts are near impossible to get in the UK, everything is a wait from either Germany or USA (crack in the windscreen had the car off the road for a month). Vauxhall don't even acknowledge they ever made it anymore and don't want to know, independants are usually fine with the ICE side (it's basically an Astra J) but if anything goes wrong with the EV drivetrain you're on your own.
Ultimately I will miss the immediate power and the many creature comforts it offered (preheating on an icy morning was a god send) but I won't miss much else.

 

[vexorg]

Makes a bit of a mockery of the whole going green when you look at the carbon footprint for that car and it could be written off for something very minor.

 

[Didge3]

Makes a bit of a mockery of the whole going green when you look at the carbon footprint for that car and it could be written off for something very minor.

Cars have become such a consumable these days that lots of expensive cars get written off very easily. If something major went wrong with it and ins wrote it off its not like it'd just go entirely to waste, I'm sure almost every part of it bar the body shell would be reused. As long as the battery stays healthy it is worth ~£3000 anyway and at time of sale is in as good condition as it was when new.

 

[vexorg]

its not like it'd just go entirely to waste

No, it'll sit in a scrap yard for years since they were such a flop and so few on the road to be repaired.

 

[Didge3]

No, it'll sit in a scrap yard for years since they were such a flop and so few on the road to be repaired.

Quite the optimist I see
I am a member of several groups for these cars, they unfortunately do go wrong, little things but parts are a pain to get. Ones that go up on ebay as breaking for spares get fleeced quickly. There is a perfectly good chance it'll carry on working for many years to come, as it stands there is nothing actually wrong with it and I see nothing going wrong in the foreseeable. If I'd really wanted to keep it I would have.

 

[vexorg]

I've only ever seen one on the road in all the years they've been released, only because it lives about a mile away on the main road.

And if there are "several" groups for these cars then I'm sceptical on you as a reliable source
The figures dont lie: https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?utf8=✓&q=ampera

 

[StevenRB45]

I've only ever seen one on the road in all the years they've been released, only because it lives about a mile away on the main road.

And if there are "several" groups for these cars then I'm sceptical on you as a reliable source
The figures dont lie: https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/?utf8=✓&q=ampera

The same car was sold as an Opel and a Chevy...the Internet allows owners of all flavours of them to share info.

On topic...I made a similar choice when the Mazda went, they weren't a common car so when bits broke especially after covid, the only place you got them was Mazda at full ticket..on back order.

When the car isn't really worth it as an "experience" i.e. not something you'd drive for fun and you don't need it as a tool there's no point in watching it sit around waiting for something to break.