Opel to Show European Version of Chevy Volt Plug-in Hybrid at Geneva Auto Show

Opel will unveil a vehicle at the Geneva Auto Show in March that uses the same powertrain as the upcoming Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, parent company General Motors announced this week, and that the car will be named Ampera.
The Ampera (pictured) will enter production in 2011, one year after the Volt is scheduled to do so, GM said. Vauxhall, Opel's sister brand in the U.K., will get its own version in 2012 or sometime thereafter.
All three cars will share the Voltec powertrain, which will use an electric motor for propulsion. A battery pack will supply electricity to the motor for the initial 40 or so miles of driving. After that, an onboard gasoline generator will come on to juice the battery pack for roughly 200 more miles of travel.
Once out of gasoline, the Ampera's lithium-ion battery can be recharged via a standard 230-volt outlet. GM will release more data on the European-specification Ampera at the Geneva show.
"With the Ampera, Opel will be the first European automobile manufacturer to provide customers several hundred kilometers of non-stop electric driving," said Alain Visser, a spokesman for GM Europe's chief marketing office.
The European variant of the Volt is a key model for GM Europe's future model plans and the reinvention of Opel as an upper mid-market brand.
The Ampera is not expected to have any major styling changes in comparison to the Volt and is set to rival the new generation Toyota Prius and Honda Insight that will go on sale in Europe this year.
GM will be hoping that the Ampera's groundbreaking plug-in hybrid powertrain technology will give the model an edge over the Prius and Insight - conventional hybrids that rely on less-desirable nickel-metal hydride battery technology