Opel Ampera Fleet Sales Grow 180 Percent
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Opel has more than doubled the fleet customer base of its Ampera extended-range electric vehicle. As of October of this year, The General’s European arm boasted nearly 2,000 Ampera fleet customers, compared to roughly 700 in March — an increase of more than 180 percent.
Partly responsible for the sales growth are companies that order up to 20 Amperas at a time. In Germany, Ampera’s fleet customer base increased by more than 50 percent, while growth in the Netherlands grew 200 percent.
Opel cites Ampera’s range-extending ability as a reason for the car’s increasing popularity among European fleets; a long range is vital for fleet customers such as security services provider Trigion, a subsidiary of Western European facilities firm Facilicom.
“Trigion Security is one of the first companies in the Netherlands who deployed the Ampera. We are attracted to its very low fuel consumption,” says Martine Geurts, Vice-President and Director of Facilicom Service Group. “The Ampera is currently being piloted at our Trigion subsidiary and this pilot is being rolled out across the whole group as the next logical step.”
The GM Authority Take
Perhaps 2,000 fleet sales through the first ten months of 2012 isn’t as impressive as twice that amount (each month) for the Astra or Insignia… but as we mentioned previously, what’s more important than overall sales volume for class-creating vehicles such as the Ampera is year-over-year growth. Combine that with the fact that Ampera is Europe’s best-selling passenger EV, as well as the reasons for fleet sales (read: EV mode and extended-range mode with great overall fuel economy) and it’s easy to see a bright future for the vehicle (and its Chevy-badged cousin).
On a sidetone, most seem to prefer the Ampera to the Chevy Volt.
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Ah, the Opel is mainly preferred because in Europe Opel is positioned higher in the Market by GM. Chevrolet is the low-budget alternative. So when Ampera and Volt are comparable in price, almost any customer will PERCEIVE the Opel as the better value for money alternative.
Didn’t I read an article not to long ago about GM getting out of fleet sales? Has that business practice changed?
I believe the plan was to reduce fleet sales, not eliminate them, in an effort to boost resale values (which are hurt when fleets dump their vehicles after a few years). Some fleet sales are good for brand awareness and volume to eat up some overhead, but only if the numbers are kept under control.
Fleet in Europe is not the same as US Fleet. In Europe most top end cars are sold as Fleet, at good margins. A company might provide all its managers with Fleet autos, say a bank in Germany giving all 15000 mangers Amps as fleet instead of Audis
Good point, John. Thanks for the insight!
Alex, can you come up with total Opel Ampera sales for the year? Early in the year 7,000 pre sales was bandied about, but I haven’t seen anything even close to that and I don’t have the resources to get that ionformation. Thank you. –Gary
Gary — let me do some digging.
Alex
in 2011, Opel sold 324 Amperas.
In 2012, 828 Amperas have been registered as new cars in Gemany.
In this press release
http://media.gm.com/media/intl/en/opel/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/intl/en/2012/opel/12_12_opel_ampera.html
Opel reported that the Ampera is with 21% market share the market leader in electrical vehicles in Europe in the first 10 months of 2012, without giving concrete sales figures.
It seems that this press release is the source which Alex Luft’s blog entry is based about.
Quote:
“For example in the Netherlands its market share increased to 66%. In Germany, it remains the leader by a wide margin (28% share) and the same is true of Belgium (22%) and Switzerland (31%).
Although total European EV sales have increased by around 130 percent year on year (Jan-Oct 2011 vs. Jan-Oct 2012), this falls well short of industry expert predictions.”
Chevrolet Volt new car registrations in Germany are consolidated under “Other Chevrolet” in the official statistic.
I wish the volt had the amperas front end… amperas look better than the volt.