Feature | A new Australia Car Industry
Let’s welcome a new modern Australian car industry A few years ago, we bid a fond farewell to the car industry in Australia and most recently a fond farewell to an industry icon in Holden but that should not be the end of the story, it should really be the beginning. We should be welcoming a new era with an electric autonomous, composite, modular vehicle and the Society of Automotive Engineers – Australasia (SAE-A) was ready to get behind such a proposal. This is especially timely in the era of COVID-19 when it has become obvious that we rely too heavily on overseas manufacturing in all areas. And it could be a global platform. Australia must preserve the engineering expertise built up by Holden and other Australian car company engineers over the years. “These engineers are a priceless brains trust that could launch right into a new automotive venture such as the electric police car project SAE-A announced this week,” SAE-A Chairman and CEO Adrian Feeney said. “I call on federal and state governments to support our feasibility study to get this project going, and to save our engineering brains trust while we still have it. “The Federal Government has shown its willingness to support automotive initiatives with the recent Automotive Innovation Lab Access Grants administered by the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Karen Andrews. “Added to that, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg are clearly committed to rebuilding our post-COVID economy, and the car industry can be part of that.” Mr Feeney said the SAE-A electric police car project had generated strong support from Australian automotive suppliers, from vehicle design to complete electric powertrains. “All it needs is the political will and modest financial support to do a feasibility study and harness all the diverse capabilities we have on our doorstep,” he said.
“The Holden engineers are a world class team, but their knowledge will soon be dissipated as they seek new jobs in other industries and other countries. “SAE-A is ready to ramp up the police car project – all we need is a small amount of funding to make it happen, and we can have some solid answers within six months. “With the government focused on building a clever, self-sufficient post-COVID Australia, we hope the Holden shutdown might be a catalyst for the start of something special, instead of the end.” SAE-A Chairman and CEO Adrian Feeney said a global car would energise Australia’s automotive sector homing in on uniquely Australian engineering and manufacturing strengths. “COVID-19 has shown the importance of car manufacturing, and we propose to start with a car that no other country could build,” he said. “We would design it at the cutting edge of near-horizon technology, and we would build it in the medium volumes which Australia has always excelled in.
Australia’s car industry is ready for an electric future What would it look like? It would be electric, substantially autonomous, built of advanced composites and made in a total volume of 50,000 to 100,000 per year. “It would be a modular family of specialist vehicles for world markets – imagine a police car, an ambulance, perhaps even a light military vehicle all off the same platform,” Mr Feeney said. The key to a reborn Australian car industry is to make the most of what our car and component manufacturers have always done better than others.
“We have always achieved more with less – more performance, greater strength and value for money, with smaller budgets, fewer engineers, and tighter economies of scale,” he said. “We still have the core engineering and manufacturing skills here, and if we have learnt anything from this current situation, it is imperative that we do it and do it now.” “First to join our group is Delineate, a transportation design company whose clients include Tesla, Google, Honda, Ford and Nissan,” he said. “Delineate has given us our initial inspiration – a blue-sky imagining of what a 21st century police car might look like – as a first step towards a commercially viable real-world vehicle.” Mr Feeney proposed a process similar to that which produced the aXcess Australia concept cars 20 years ago – two aspirational cars that generated billions of dollars of export sales. He said those cars had drawn on more than 130 Australian component manufacturers, and quite a few of those manufacturers were still in business. “For example, the first car was made of advanced composites such as Kevlar, and right now in Australia we build cars with even more advanced Kevlar-carbon fibre panels,” he said. The second aXcess Australia car, the LEVE, was one of the first hybrid electric cars to be designed and built in the world and it
18 | July 2020
VTE JULY 2020 FINAL.indd 18
13/7/20 7:14 pm
