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Opel Ampera-e Arrives In Customers’ Hands In Norway, Rest Of Europe To Follow

Here’s a statistic that says a lot about the country’s perspective on the matter of personal transportation: 37 percent of new cars are electric. Norway definitely loves EVs, having hit an important milestone back in December of 2016: 100,000 zero-emission vehicles on the roads.
2017 Opel Ampera-e 11 photos
Photo: Opel
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The information presented earlier is necessary to understand why Norway is the first country to get the Opel Ampera-e. Basically the European version of the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt, the Ampera-e got to meet its first owners only recently. Opel’s regional office delivered three examples of the breed to three cheery people (Turid Høiem, Helmer Teksdal and Bente Østreng) just outside Oslo’s town hall.

“I've been looking forward to this for a long time,” declared Bente Østreng, “and I'm very excited.” The owner of the blue-painted car featured in the main photo further added: “We are already looking forward to taking it for the first long journey to our cabin in Sweden.”

That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, if I may say. Not only do Norway and Sweden fare well in terms of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, but the Ampera-e is NEDC rated at 520 kilometers. Under real-world driving conditions, a more likely range is 380 km, which translates to almost as much as the Chevy Bolt’s 238 miles.

Germany and the Netherlands are the next European markets planned to receive the Ampera-e, whereas the order books in Switzerland will open late in the summer of 2017. On that note, 299,900 kroner is the price Opel slapped to the compact-sized electric vehicle in Norway. And that’s more than the BMW i3 augmented with the 94 Ah 33 kWh battery (267,500 kroner).

On an ending note, have a guess how many EVs roam in the Kingdom of Norway at the present moment. 110,000? Maybe 120,000? Nope. It’s actually 150,000 electric vehicles, and that number is all the more impressive bearing in mind that Norway has a population of 5.3 million.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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