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Ellesmere Port's bid to build Ampera hits snags

By Rob Golding Motor Industry 09 October 2009 15:02 Prime minister Gordon Brown’s personal crusade to get Vauxhall's version of the Chevrolet Volt petrol-electric plug-in hybrid – the Ampera – built in Britain's Ellesmere Port factory in 2012 is a dream delayed, CAR can disclose today.News that the UK Astra plant is the best in Europe, that the Astra's Delta platform will underpin the Ampera, and that Volt will be on US sale from 2010 had been taken to mean that Vauxhall would be churning out the cars in the north west within three years.But the prospect of an electric car industry growing up around the run-down Merseyside manufacturing site is not imminent, CAR has learned.'No Ampera to be built in Europe before 2015'Vauxhall insiders have made it clear that the car to be known as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera in Europe will be an import from the US for at least five years. One senior planner told us: 'The US will be the sole source of Amperas until at least 2015.'Bob Lutz, GM's former product supremo who recently came out of retirement as a PR, said that the low value of the dollar made the US an ideal site for the manufacturing of export cars. And with forecast sticker prices of the range-extender electric car standing at a scary £35,000+, every price saving is vital to its marketability.The European market also needs time to get its electricity recharge infrastructure in place before it is worth making cars onshore in volume, GM high-ups point out.

Win an internship in VW's design contest

Volkswagen is offering students a chance to design a video game car for a contest. Three winners get a six-month internship at the VW design department in Wolfsburg, Germany. Students working in fields of interior and exterior design, interface design, graphic design and color and trim design can submit concepts.

Hyundai ix35 Hydrogen FCEV for £300 a month and free fuel – but only in the U.S.

Hyundai Tucson Hydrogen FCEV (pictured) for £300 a month and free fuel – but only in the U.S. It’s very early days for cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, not least because there’s very little in the way of a refuelling infrastructure in place. But car makers are starting to push FCEVs in a bigger way as production costs fall and performance increases, and Hyundai are at the forefront of this move with the hydrogen-powered ix35 and its US equivalent the Hyundai Tucson.