My email was from Ian Allen, Manager for Regulatory affairs UK. I got the impression that the Volt/Ampera was a stand alone project, if they take the power train forward then its likely to be into other types of platform, like supermini, SUV etc a bit like Toyota/Lexus have done. Ian was particularly excited about connectivity in future models and how they will interact with our smartphones etc, they hope to leapfrog Nissan in this respect, though I have very little experience of what Nissan offer. I think the take up of the Volt/Ampera will influence their strategy and since I got my ampera out of a field near luton where it had been for some time it could be that developmentally its a dead end. The influence of the high end offerings from McLaren Porsche and Tesla and the publicity they get is more likely to affect buying habits than weekly spreadsheets of energy usage. What was also apparent was that the Intellectual property relating to the Volt/Ampera is lodged firmly in the USA and owned by GM USA, and Luton and their counterparts in Opel have very little recourse to it other than the published patent paperwork. When I asked for duty cycle information of the engine and generator components to do some maths on energy harvesting for instance they shook their heads and said that no one at Luton is privy to this info, though he did say that GPS integrated cycling of the power train for specific destinations was a good idea. J
Thx
