RANGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

Can range-extender tech finally deliver on its early promise? STEPHEN DOBIE finds out from the experts

- STEPHEN DOBIE

Let’s wind back to 2012: Britain is gripped by Olympic fever as Vauxhall launches the Ampera and the UK's first ‘plug-in’ hybrid decisively beats the Volkswagen Up to European Car of the Year glory in the process. Within 12 months the Ampera will have a carbonfibre-cored rival in the unlikely shape of the BMW i3, another car using its petrol engine purely as a range-extender in what appears to be a movement gathering momentum.

Yet more than a decade later both cars feel like distant memories and range-extender (REx) technology - essentially where an engine charges a drive battery instead of powering the car itself - remains remarkably niche. Mazda will sell you its MX-30 crossover with a dinky rotary generator on board, while LEVC London cabs deploy REx tech on a larger scale. But most customers opt for a battery-electric vehicle (BEV) or parallel hybrid and ignore a once-pioneering stepping stone between the two camps.