Vauxhall-Opel’s CEO has confirmed the company is planning a successor to the slow-selling Ampera electric range-extender car, and a new entry-level city automobile set to cost around £7,000. Bosses have previously told us it’ll be badged Viva.
Announced in a series of official tweets, Opel boss Karl-Thomas Neumann said the new models will form ‘part of [Opel’s] enormous product offensive – with 27 new vehicles in the 2014-2018 time frame’. The first of these new models – the heavily revised Corsa supermini – made its debut earlier in July 2014.
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On electric cars, Neumann appeared to be undeterred by lacklustre results for the petrol-electric Vauxhall/Opel Ampera, which will be discontinued in 2015. despite only 332 Amperas being sold across Europe in the first five months of 2014, Neumann tweeted: ‘We see electric mobility as an important part of the mobility of tomorrow and we will continue to drive down costs and deliver affordability.’ Currently, the cheapest Vauxhall Ampera model retails for £28,750, after the £5000 government incentive for plug-in automobiles has been deducted.
It’s not yet clear if Vauxhall-Opel’s Ampera successor will be a pure electric car, like the Nissan Leaf, or another range-extender EV supplemented by a petrol engine. Neumann only went as far as saying: ‘After the eventual run-out of the current generation Ampera, we’ll introduce a successor product in the electric vehicle segment.’
Meanwhile the Opel boss quashed rumours that Opel would spawn a complete low-budget range to fight Dacia and Datsun. ‘Opel will not move into the low-budget segment’, Neumann clarified. “We will leave this to others!”
However, Neumann did promise there would be a new entry-level model, as revealed by auto express in a world exclusive in June 2014. The new Viva will be based on the next-gen Chevrolet spark from elsewhere in the GM stable. Vauxhall intended to price the automobile from £6995, though Opel’s CEO reassured ‘[it is] no budget car, but a real Opel, [with] quality, innovation, [and German engineering]!”
Expect the new Viva to receive GM’s new three-cylinder turbo engines, gunning for sub-100g/km CO2 emissions and a 70mpg official economy score.