Fisher and Paykel have just announced hundreds of job cuts at their plant in Brisbane. Victa mowers are still made in Australia, but, increasingly, they’re powered by less environmentally destructive four-stroke engines built overseas. The last distinctively Australian personal computer was probably the MicroBee. I believe that the last televisions produced in Australia came out of the Sanyo factory in Wodonga in the late 80s or early 1990s. And Australia has never mass-produced jet airliners, bulk oil tankers, or watches. And, in general, this hasn’t seemed to bother governments or the broader public too much. But the conniptions of the Australian automotive industry have always been a special case.
Through the post-war years, a profusion of tariffs and incentives led to a huge number of manufacturers assembling small numbers of poor-quality cars at plants scattered across the country. Even with the tariff barriers, the inefficiency became increasingly unsustainable. But it was politically untenable to simply discard tariffs and let the car industry disappear. This began to be unwound with the introduction of the Button Plan of the 1980s. Industry consolidation was supposed to reduce costs, increase quality levels, and thus result in Australian-built cars being competitive with imports and suitable for export. The policy - the fundamentals of which haven’t really changed all that much in the more than 20 years hence - has been pretty successful - though, as the Wikipedia notes, badge-engineering did flop badly. While factories, notably Nissan and Mitsubishi, have indeed closed, Australia’s remaining automotive industries do design and build internationally-competitive products, particularly Holden. Toyota doesn’t design much here, but the Camrys and Aurions that come out of its plant are as well put-together as those from anywhere else, and end up in the Middle East in droves. Ford, by contrast, hasn’t been able to find a substantial export home for the Falcon or its four-wheel-drive derivative, the Territory; but, by all reports, it’s much more a reflection of the global problems of Ford than a reflection of the quality of the car itself. Along with the high-profile export of cars, the component companies are also competing around the world.
But despite all this, the industry is in trouble again. Mitsubishi has gone; Ford’s engine plant in Geelong will go in 2010. The assembly operations of Toyota and Holden are not nearly as profitable as they were. Component factories are closing on a fairly regular basis. And, so, we have a new Labor government conducting an industry review, led by the nicest guy in politics, the former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks.
So why is the Australian car industry in so much trouble, despite an economy that’s been booming? The review’s discussion paper provides a useful summary. Essentially, the Australian industry lacks the economies of scale to produce small cars cost-effectively (though Ford is going to have another try at it in 2010 with the introduction of a domestically-assembled Focus); you have to produce 3-400,000 cars annually for a plant to be competitive, apparently. So, over the past decade or so, Australia’s domestic car manufacturers have concentrated on one particular niche - large sedans and wagons, with both Ford and Holden concentrating on rear wheel drive. Globally, this is an oddity; the vast majority of vehicles produced are front-wheel-drive for space and fuel-efficiency reasons; the only other manufacturers who concentrate on rear-drive sedans are Mercedes-Benz and BMW. But given cheap fuel, the relative value of the cars through the modest remaining tariff protection, various “incentive schemes”, the low Aussie dollar, and compliant government fleets who automatically buy domestic models, the Aussie industry did pretty well through the 1990s and early 2000s.
But then they got crunched from three sides. First, the Aussie dollar has gone from 50-odd US cents to 90-odd cents. As I understand it, contracts in the motor industry are usually written in US dollars, so imports have gotten a hell of a lot cheaper and exports a lot less profitable. The second problem is an increasing preference for “smaller” cars in Australia. Today’s Toyota Corolla or Mitsubishi Lancer isn’t actually that small at all; it’s roughly the same size inside as a 1980s Holden Commodore, and performs similarly. Given the increase in fuel prices, and the fact that you can comfortably fit four adults in a modern small car, clearly a lot of people have decided that they don’t actually need the extra space in a Falcadore, or even a Camry. Those who do want extra space have increasingly been choosing imported four-wheel-drives.
The Review’s terms of reference indicate that the continuation of car manufacturing in Australia is a given; the goal is to figure out how to assist the industry to survive “while limiting price impacts on businesses and consumers”. This will almost certainly involve continuation of tariff protection, more “industry assistance funding” such as the already-announced Green Vehicle Fund, and so on. And so we might have the Button Plan, Mark II. If we really want a vehicle manufacturing industry in Australia, that’s the price we’ll have to pay.
Nick Gruen (who was, if I have been informed correctly, a Button ministerial adviser around the time of the original Button Plan) has argued in the past that the net cost may be small or zero in terms of the overall Australian economy. And there’s other arguments that can be made in support of the car industry - there are defence implications in losing heavy manufacturing capabilities, putting too many eggs in the resources basket means our economy might be more prone to volatility, and the costs to individuals of losing jobs that they’ve held for long periods is often underestimated.
But there are other costs to supporting a domestic car industry that aren’t often accounted for either. The fact that our manufacturers churn out large sedans means that our car fleet uses a hell of a lot more fuel - and releases a lot more CO2 and other pollutants - into the air than it might otherwise do; over time, this is going to push up the costs of meeting Australia’s emissions reductions targets as other cuts need to be found. Australia’s governments buy cars that are over-sized for their purpose; the cost of this subsidy is argued to be “low” in the review discussion paper but I note they’re not prepared to put a figure on it. And the domestic automotive manufacturers (and, presumably, the related trade unions) add considerably to the power of the road lobby to the detriment of sensible transport policy.
So let’s review the protection and assistance given to the car industry. But let’s broaden the discussion a bit. Is the car industry really deserving of more protection than fridges, lawnmowers, and all the other struggling manufacturing industries around the traps - or, for that matter, the industries, like the PC industry, that we’ve never had? Are we getting a good deal, overall?
Australia builds Aussie-designed light aircraft (agricultural and other uses) at Traralgon, Victoria. Gippsland Aeronautics: http://www.gippsaero.com/ZoneID=135.htm
Good on them!
Assistance doesn’t just have to be ‘protection’. From my understanding of Lindsay Tanner’s recent speech the focus is more on R&D assistance and the like.
I’d like to see more diplomatic and R&D assistance in targeting niche markets overseas for Australian export for all manufactured commodities. Building better cars is one thing, but getting someone overseas to buy it because they know it is a better car is a different kettle of fish.
Regarding the actual size of cars. I agree with your assessment regarding the first series of Commodores. That is one of the reasons why the Falcon at the time was so popular. It is a different universe now. GMH and Ford need to resize their ‘large’ cars otherwise they will be lost in the SUV/Micro bifurcation which the global automotive market has been undergoing for the last 7-8 years.
Cars of BMW 5 or even 3-series size should be made. Large cars simply are not cool for most of the next generation of new car buyers. It is clear that local manufacturers really did not learn anything with the massive popularity of import culture. The government could encourage the design of such a new car through a tendering process and a 3 year timeline, and make it the core model of government (civilian) leasing arrangements. It would fit with the consumer-driven model that Tanner was advocating.
As a sidenote, regarding the 2020 circus, it is a bloody joke that the automotive industry is still understood purely in economic terms and I don’t know why the cultural dimension of automobility isn’t given a much higher priority.
For your purpose perhaps. The car buying public seem to function fairly well with their own free choice. Thanks for offering to decide for them though.
Demand for an Aussie electric/hybrid is surely about to explode. Anyone know if there’s one on the table at Holden/Ford?
In Vic gov there was quite a backlash from workers when they were given a few Prius mixed into the fleet. People resented them because they were not big and impressive. Didn’t have guts. etc etc. Vanity & emotionalism. Management backed off - lack of guts.
Ambigulous: I know, that’s why I said “jet airliners”. There’s also Jabiru, who not only make ultralight planes, but engines to go with them. And, like you said, good on them.
But my broader point was just that there’s lots of things Australia doesn’t make any more that we don’t panic about. Cars, for some reason, are a matter for panic stations.
Is it not simply because there are so many people already employed in the sector?
Craig: As Glen has pointed out, private buyers have been walking away from Falcadores in droves.
It’s only fleets, particularly government fleets - which usually have an explicit or implicit “Buy Australian” requirement - that are keeping the domestic car makers going.
“And Australia has never mass-produced ……. bulk oil tankers,…..”
Nit pick alert!
The “P.J. Adams”, from memory 32,500 ton oil tanker, also the “Amanda Miller” now that I think about it, the “Ocean Digger”, an oil rig, just 3 of dozens of ships of various types built in the BHP [later Whyalla Shipbuilding and Engineering Works] in Whyalla until roughly 1970 [very approximately].
We can [or could] do it then.
I’m with the B’Booon at No.7. “Is it not simply because there are so many people already employed in the sector?” Shut down the car industry tomorrow and there would be thousands more people out of work a week later. It’s not just the Holden, Ford and Toyota plants, it’s all the businesses that supply them.
Having said that, there are increasing numbers of component parts coming from overseas.
Problem solved then!
Far from walking away from Commodores, the public has been buying them in droves - it’s the #1 car in the country. Falcon has been suffering because the model is old, and Ford is too cash-strapped to revamp the model to the same degree that Holden has.
Fleet sales weren’t what they used to be. Employees get what they ask for these days, and apparently they’re asking for family sedans.
We’re a niche manufacturing market and our niche is large rear-wheel drive sedans. That’s why GM made Holden its large rear-drive design house. That’s what we’ll be producing for the foreseeable future: a) because that’s what the demand is for; and b) it suits our volumes.
Today hybrids are a joke. An expensive, counter-productive joke. If an employer insisted I drive one, I’d change jobs.
You don’t understand, Robert. The car industry is dependent on the oil industry. Ergo, it’s hugely important to the economy!
Then there is - as a few comments have already made clear - the problem of penis size. Big is better, as all guys know. Women don’t understand.
Finally, you mention “defence implications”. I’ve been wondering why we would want to buy US Raptors or even Super Hornets when we could easily develop a home-made fleet of our own. Maybe ultra-lights are the way to go?
Instead of a single multi-million-dollar machine creaming down on a target at 500 kmph, you could have a whole swarm of cheap, auto-piloted, Aussie mini-Hornets drifting languidly towards the drop zone. And instead of dropping US-made missiles, they could drop slabs of XXXX and VB - hey, talk about your Aussie manufacturing excellence, mate!
We used to have a personal computer industry here - of sorts. The Microbee was a very small scale example - although back when they started large scale PC manufacturing was very rare (maybe Tandy and Commodore) - the PC industry was still in it’s hobbyist phase. IBM hadn’t weighed in at that point although that was just around the corner. After IBM dropped their PC bombshell, we had a PC assembly industry built around “buy australian” contract provisions in Federal and State governments. IBM had a small scale assembly plant at Wangaratta (at least I think they did) and Bull HN (nee Honeywell) had a design/manufacturing plant in Terry Hills based around a single customer (the Australian Tax Office). None of it survived - the products were either too tailored to the customer or making products made more cheaply elsewhere. I worked for Bull at the time - we worked bloody hard on that diskless PC we were selling, beat IBM in the contract race with a better, cheaper product and… every damn cent of profit went back to propping up a dying beast of a corporation which was half owned by the French state. The contract was worth boatloads of money, but everyone who worked on the project got a piddling 1% payrise (and that was better than anyone else in the company). All the clever people left directly after that. PC manufacturing in Australia collapsed as the machines became completely commodified.
I can’t understand wanting a car industry here. I still think it comes down to this illusion that having a big heavy manufacturing facility is somehow insurance in a shooting war when you want to make ammo, with smiling girls in newsreel garb.
To hazard a guess, I’d say that the automotive industry could be seen as a ’special case’ because a great deal of Australians have part of their identity invested in cars. Car ownership (of a basic level) is viewed by many Australians as almost a democratic right, as well as a signifier of personal identity (linked with a sense of national identity to boot).
The failing of an Australian car manufacturer would then be greeted by many as a symbolic failure of national identity and a cause for shame (as well as sympathy for those out of work). But you’re never likely to hear anyone complain about a jet manufacturing plant going under - there just isn’t any sense of personal connection there.
The “AMUST Executive 816″ beat the Microbee hands down. Z80/CPM, “attache case” format (very similar to a modern laptop). Australian designed and built. I knew a few guys who worked on the firmware, and used one myself. It actually had more grunt than most Z80/CPM boxes used as desktops in businesses at the time, was business-oriented rather than hobbyist. Came with wordstar, dBase, a fairly advanced BASIC, etc, etc.
BTW: Why don’t governments demand equity from commercial ventures when acting as bail-out angels? That would allow some representation on the board and ensure that there was some control and surety that money isn’t wasted. If the company turns around, they can always buy back the equity.
“Defence” is a laugh - how does producing tiny numbers of saloons help our defence?
As for the number of people employed in manufacturing (as distinct from selling, importing, maintaining, etc) cars, it’s quite trivial in the big picture - 16,000 (or <0.02% of the workforce) in 2000 and less now. It’s less than a single month’s growth in the labour force; they’d be absorbed very quickly. The recent closure of Misubishi did not even make a blip in Adelaide’s unemployment rate, let alone the national one.
The Brack’s Commission’s proposed $500m pa in extra business welfare amounts to a new subsidy of about $30,000pa per worker, and that’s before you take account of the cost of the tariffs and of the many non-tariff barriers (the banning of Japanese secondhand cars, peculiar ADRs, the restrictions on low-volume imports, etc).
How it can possibly be in the national interest to force us to buy expensive and unsuitable rubbish for our transport?
Robert @ 1.44pm - sorry, I wasn’t trying to “correct” you. Just wanted to add a small, successful company to the discussion.
cheers
That’s a nice,concise suammry of the problem, Robert.
But I’m not sure how competitive, really. We are between a rock and a hard place globally - we cannot build small cars as cheaply as others, and we cannot niche large cars internationally as efectively as Mercedes and Volvo, say.
But ironically, the best comparative advantage we have is in big cars anyway.
It sounds like Button was right, and it wll be down to one or two manufacturers looking for a slice of the international market for big cars.
The Mistubishi 380 was a really nice vehicle, though. Shame.
Robert M at 1.50pm,
that, and the special “sweetheart deal” where the ATO supervises “novated leases” offerred to employees. Someone told me these leases were introduced because the manufacturers whinged that their fleet sales would plummet when FBT came in.
A big manufacturing facility supports lots of little manufacturing facilities. As long as the operations are profitable to the people putting up the capital then good. We used to make small 4 cylinder cars here, but it’s not economical to make them here anymore. They’re a mass-market, price-sensitive item that is better suited to factories closer to cheap labor and their intended markets.
Saying we should make more of a specific type of car reminds me of when Nissan filled their Clayton lot with white Pulsars in order to meet their quota under the Button plan. Then they did their best to get rid of them in a fire sale that saw them bail from the country.
We should be making exactly what customers will pay us to make. Right now, they’re paying for large sedans to be made here (in some cases even overseas customers). Their only other choices are luxury European sedans in an entirely different price bracket. If they want a small runabout, they can already choose from over a dozen imports in a saturated market segment.
Ambigulous: no worries. Didn’t mean to appear narky.
DD: the theory is that if the time came to re-enact WWII, the resources and skills fostered by the automotive industry could be turned around to make artillery pieces, tanks, etc. etc. etc.
Of course, WWII will never happen again. If Australia ever faced a serious threat of invasion, there’s only one industrial product we need - high-enriched uranium. WWII-style total war between major industrial powers is a dead paradigm.
Here in the Kimberley, the hospital fleets have been changing over the last few years. Sure, we do still have commodores and Falcons but not all the cars are as was the case not so long ago. We use a lot more Corollas, some Pulsars, Subaru Foresters as well as 4wds for the remote community visits. You can get a 4cyl diesel prado that has better fuel economy than the big sixes. Nobody seems to mind too much as long as the car suits the purpose. I dunno where you work CraigMc but if someone offered me a hybrid to drive I wouldn’t be resigning on principle.
Craig Mc: in case you haven’t noticed, the whole point is that the car manufacturers aren’t making money on their large sedans. Hence this inquiry.
Nobody has mentioned immigration yet. Surely if you want to compete with Asia in manufacturing, you need to have cheap labor available? Maybe we should set up a local Free Trade Zone and move our car plants to Nauru? I know where a nice plot of recently-vacated land is available…
Their only other choices are luxury European sedans in an entirely different price bracket.
er, excepting the Mazda 6, Hyundai Sonata and Grandeur, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Nissan Maxima?
Craig Mc,
You suggested earlier that Commodores were the best selling model in the country. As in - they had sold the most of that model compared to any other model. That only works as logic if you take ‘Commodore’, ‘Falcon’ and compare them to any other single model. To honestly judge comparative sales of vehicles you must look at the sales as a class, comparing small, medium large and SUV class sales.
The ‘Model’ sales figures are in fact boosted unnaturally by the buying presence of fleets who then on-sell the cars at much reduced prices on the private market.
Australian Governments are also indicating that the previous attachment to the larger car has lost its gloss and looking over the fleet makeup of many agencies is now revealing with a higher proportion overall of ‘other’ vehicles to Commodore and Falcon combined.
Hannsh’s Dad: great nitpick - wasn’t aware of that!
Jobby: That’s what I suspect. Whether that is sufficient justification for special intervention is precisely what I’m wondering about.
Latest market segmentation figures from FCAI provide the clearest evidence of the shift to smaller vehicles.
what are you whingeing about Robert? We can still make submarines can’t we?
Hi Robert,
In short - we have never gotten a good deal on this. While I don’t think protectionism is always a good idea, the countries that have a solid manufacturing base always got their industries up and running by doing just that. They didn’t keep the protection down the track once the industries were self-sustaining (except for the Airbus but that’s another story!). Move the subsidies towards R&D and helping local companies defend patents from “grab’n'run” challenges (a specialty of the USA) and you’ll see a much better return on investment.
You’ve asked exactly the question I’ve asked for years - the response from any of my friends who had an opinion on it was similar to Jobby’s description: “Car industry is critical so we can get vehicles for Australian Conditions - nobody else makes’em tough enough”.
Apart from this blatent bull#$% there has been no reason to subsidise - electronics industry would’ve been a better bet or medical devices (Resmed, etc) but the car industry always seemed to be a “special” case.
I guess the government decision makers are so used to seeing “our” cars in the fleet that they’d balk at anything else.
It’s always been the biggest single-user of the Aussie cars and they’ve always been built to a price (rather than a quality standard) meaning that whenever the “threat” of a non-subsidised car loomed into view the response was “we’d better keep them going or there’ll be a backlash and it’ll cost us more”. Politics once more attempting to triumph over engineering
FDB re:
I think the hybrid is a goner now that small turbo diesels like the Hyundai i30 have appeared.
http://www.caradvice.com.au/7707/greener-hyundai-i30-crdi/
Now, I will readily admit I drive one of these (the firm’s car of an ever expanding fleet of i30s) often 1000km per week, but as a driver for 50 years (started on a WW2 Willy’s Jeep at 7y/o [and an old Holden man who re-built and used to drive an FB Holden with a 202 red motor, HK disc brakes on an HR crossmember, 14″ wheels and slippery diff BTW] I think the i30 is the most incredible machine I’ve ever driven. According to a Brit website (no admissions from me here) the 1.6L version goes like the clappers and will do a shade under 200km/hr. But that 3.2 L/100 km says it all. (And it feels like a large car but goes round corners like it’s on rails.) Why spend some 20K more on a hybrid which uses more juice than a turbo-diesel?
And the approx 25K purchase price. How the hell can FordoMore compete ultimately with that level of technology (designed in Germany so I believe) and price for a 5 pax vehicle?
I think GM and Ford are dinosaurs and in Oz at least, probably not worth saving.
IF we had any brains we would be leading the world in building solar cars. I seem to remember a lot of excited TV news stories about solar car races across the outback. Was that a pre-Howard initiative that died a slow, quiet death? Or maybe not the Rodent’s fault for once?
If we need to have a heavy manufacturing sector, we could always start building these.
“you have to produce 3-400,000 cars annually for a plant to be competitive,”
That’s only half the problem. As globalisation takes over markets get larger forcing companies to build bigger factories making the minimum number for a plant to be viable ever larger. Its 3-400,000 at the moment, but that number will get higher over time and quite likely is already higher than that for very high volume mainstream cars like Corolla’s and the Ford Focus. Unless the Australian car manufactures can produce something different that can be exported in significant numbers they will simply get overwhelmed by bigger scale overseas competition. Being bigger means they can produce at lower unit cost and spend more on R&D which means better and cheaper cars.
Large relatively cheap rear wheel drive cars were a small niche that Asia, Europe and America were not very interested in. Small cars are not. For Australian car manufacturing to succeed we’ll probably need another niche. What that will be I can’t imagine. We’ll never be competetive in export markets producing small or mid-size cars that are little different from stuff on the market already and without exports our volumes aren’t big enough to sustain an industry at all. You can’t fit 400,000 cars a year into the domestic market.
Gandhi: solar cars are a pipedream. There’s simply not enough energy to move a practical car any significant distance with the energy you can collect off its roof. Electric cars (solar cars without the solar cells) are more realistic.
Peter Kemp: diesel and hybrid tech is not mutually exclusive. Diesels are also somewhat overrated - burning a liter of diesel releases more CO2 than a liter of petroleum. And that 3.2 l/100km figure is conducted under highly artificial conditions (constant 85 km/h on billiard-table terrain, tyres pumped up to ridiculous levels, wing mirrors folded, air conditioner off and windows shut, etc. etc. etc.) Furthermore, diesels release more of other types of rather lethal pollution than petrol engines do.
SG: perhaps I should have said perceived defence implications.
While the i30 sounds great, I’ll be sticking to my statesman for the forseeable future. The i30 is no doubt fine for city driving or for 2 people on longer journeys, but when you live in the country and have 4 or 5 adults on long trips which we often do, I’ll go for the leg room and grunt of my car any day.
I think that the other dimensions to this issue are the key to understanding it. The Automotive industry is significantly unique because of the compexity and size that it must be to be viable. As Robert pointed out it requires a very solid componentry industry as well as very large manufacturing and R&D capabilities. But more significantly it requires management of a unique kind.
Management stability in a modern world dominated by hopscotching executives and volatile commercial and economic factors is a vastly different picture to the 100 year stable family businesses of the past when government was prepared to be involved with industry nitty gritty. Modern government cannot cope with the highly fluid and agile world of business today in a hands on way, and have opted to play the role of regulator rather than partner. There are the few exceptions which have the trappings of the stability that government likes, automotive (changing), power, resources (vascilating), and gambling. Hence the anomalies.
Countries with taller people (Australia, US, Germany) need bigger cars than countries like Japan. The average Australian male is 6cm taller than the average Japanese male. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height)
I’m 6′4″ and can’t comfortably sit in (let alone drive) any car smaller than a Commodore. Some of the smaller compacts I literally can not fit in at all (except by laying down on the back seat. The roofs are often too low for my head.
Germany (where the large mercs and beamers are made) has a similar average height to Australia and the US. It’s no surprise that Asian manufacturers don’t make many Commodore-sized cars but Western manufacturers do.
Robert re:
The comparative CO2 per km has to be the decider:
http://www.autoweb.com.au/cms/A_109537/title_Hyundai-i30-CRDi-Tops-Greenfleet-Class-of-Panasonic-World-Solar-Challenge/newsarticle.html
5.6L per 100km and 146g of CO2 per kilometre for the Prius
3.2L per 100km and 97g of CO2 per kilometre for the i30
Agreed, highly artificial conditions, but they apply to all contestant cars.
I will concede the Prius would likely do better relatively to the i30 in pure city driving.
Jane @37, ‘grunt’ indeed if your Statesman is a V8, but the thing with turbo diesels is when that turbo becomes really effective around 2000rpm it’s like a kick in the pants as you take off. (And there’s more room inside than meets the eye.)
If you only have a v6 Statesman, and there was a racetrack nearby, I’d challenge you a few circuits
wbb: you’re right. Furthermore, diesel engines are more thermally efficient. So, both in fuel cost terms, and CO2 emissions terms, diesels put you in front of comparable petrol engines.
But the advantage is considerably smaller than what people assume just looking at the figures.
Peter Kemp: hybrid technology, particularly a parallel hybrid like the Prius doesn’t help when cruising at highway speed. The battery is just extra weight. So the conditions favour the Hyundai and disfavour the Prius.
Robert,
solar cars are a pipedream.
Hence my interest. I guess what I’m really saying is that if we had invested more in solar technology over the last decade, Australia could (again) be leading the world in this area. Sure, solar panels currently cannot power a vehicle over significant distances, but they surely have applications in hybrid technology. And of course the car industry is just one among many, as mentioned earlier.
Gandhi: let me be stronger. Solar cars will never be viable, ever, no matter how much technology improves.
It takes a certain minimum level of energy to move a car at highway, or even urban, speeds. There is a maximum level of energy available from the sun over the area of a car, and fundamental limits to the maximum efficiency of solar cells.
It makes much more sense to put solar collectors on the roof of your house than your car. Much more space, they’re never shaded by car parks, and you don’t have to worry about weight and vibration issues.
Yobbo at #39
I’m 6′4″ and can’t comfortably sit in (let alone drive) any car smaller than a Commodore
again, presumably you’ve tried the Hyundia Sonata/ Grandeur , Nissan Maxima, toyota camry/aurion.
All of the above have similar interior dimensions to the falcodores but I guess they’re just not built for Aussie conditions right? Plus Bathurst just wouldn’t be the same if Toyota and Nissan were slugging it out.:-)
Now if Holden shoved a diesel unit like the one in the Adventra into the commodore they might be onto something….
Robert Merkel says “It makes much more sense to put solar collectors on the roof of your house”
That’s exactly the plan for the “family” edition of the Tesla car (from Google/PayPal founders). They estimate that in sunny California, 70 kilometres a day and you can replenish the batteries from your roof, and won’t even need to recharge via the mains.
For their current (0-100 in under 5 secs) roadster that has a Lotus shell, they’ll refer you to qualified solar cell installers [here], and will be co-marketing solar panels.
Turbo Diesel Hybrid anyone?
I take your point, Robert, but given that battery life is a persistent problem for electric cars and hybrids, surely a steady drip from a solar panel on the car roof, bonnet and/or boot would help?
As you say, vibrations and weight can be an issue, not to mention the affordability of solar panels today. And that is exactly my point: we Aussies should be working on this sort of thing, not just the technology but also the manufacturing. And not just for cars (if we can move away from discussion of that over-hyped industry): I do accept there are severe limitations today, but who knows what tomorrow holds?
gandhi: It wouldn’t help very much at all. It’d get you a couple of kilometres extra range - no more. Even if solar cell efficiencies doubled (pretty optimistic) and weights, rolling and wind resistance were halved (also pretty optimistic) it still wouldn’t make a substantial difference.
If the whole car was coated in Dyesol film it might get a lot more than a “couple of kilometres”. If you only drive a few kilometres a day then the percentage of emissions saved is high. My car sits still 90% of the time. In the sunshine.
Never mind solar. What about wind power for cars? Sails are, to put it mildly, mature technology with a proven capacity to shift loads much larger than cars over much longer distances than the daily commute.
I’d really look forward to the traffic if I just had to call out “starboard!” at each intersection and proceed on my way. Of course, this assumes that we just adapt the rules of the sea so that power gives way to sail. Passing port to port might be a problem. And I suppose we’d have to radically widen the main roads to allow people to tack up them when the wind is adverse.
Indeed wbb. When it comes to solar power, a couple of kms is a big thing. A lot of people only drive a few kms a day, usually with no passengers and minimal luggage, usually to and from work, school/uni, or the local shops. A cheap, lightweight solar-electric vehicle would surely have a market.
How about a solar-panelled push-bike, with a 2′x6′ solar panel on top to protect the rider from rain and (yes!) sun? Been tried?
BTW I am not trying to hijack the thread here, Robert, just rolling with the flow. Industry is a bigger polluter than all the cars on the road put together, and solar power potentially has more useful applications in an industrial environment. But I think they key to long-term success (even limited success like the Microbee) involves some innovative radical thinking (like this for example).
How about this for an innovative solution?
Craig Mc said:
Not what Peter Martin says:
The Prius is old technology, lugging around a dual propulsion system and not having any potential for some pluggable electric only operation.
The GM Volt (amongst others) is an example of such a system. You get the benefit of electric only operation for the majority of your journeys (i.e. short runs around town). Using electricity is much more efficient (and less CO2 intensive) than simply burning hydrocarbons in a conventional internal combustion engine, even if it is coal powered generation. If the electricity is sourced from renewables you are WAY ahead.
I spent some time in the Federal Industry Department under Button. It’s not well known but quite a few computer firms, including Microbee, got assistance of various types. Usually their financial problems were so severe that this did not save them.
The car boys had more swing, it’s true. And under Howard, they had a real champion in Minchin, both as Industry Minister and Finance Minister. But, like the story earlier concerning Bull HN, the real problem for the local industry is the internal competition for funds. A VERY senior car industry exec once told me that his chief competition was not the others in the same market sectors in Australia, it was the other divisions overseas in his company.
Ford and Mitsubishi have severe problems on a global scale, which is what really has put paid to Mitsubishi here.
It’d probably be cheaper all up to give everyone in the industry $100,000 to just go home and get another job in the fullness of time.
A final comment - yes, we can build submarines. The crappy one was built overseas while the local ones have actually been quite impressive.
Great photo, Ghandi. That guy has done a proud job on his family transport.
Thanks BilB, I like the way it gives something back to the environment too!
gandhi wrote:
A raincoat and a banana are both cheaper and more effective. Note: use the banana for aiding propulsion, not rain protection
Heh! Mary Poppins did OK using the umbrella for propulsion.
I never suspected there night be solar threads in the material, but it makes a lot of sense.
Perhaps the banana could supply the necessary levitation?
Clearly gandhi, what the world is missing in the effort to solve global warming is a technological breakthrough in levitating bananas. Not only can the trees be considered carbon sinks, the bananas can be used for both transport and food (albeit not at the same time). Now all we need is some kind of industry subsidy to get the levitating banana industry off the ground (groan) .:-)
The discarded skins from the food bananas could be used as frictionless paving in ground-based transport too. Step out the door and whoops! you’re at the shops.
FDB - you’re really onto something. Screw the hydrogen economy, it’s the banana economy that will save us. Maybe we can become a Banana Republic? I demand the flag be changed to remove the union jack and replaced with a Warhol-esque levitating banana, floating over a banana skin road with somebody in Tom Carroll slip-surfing pose on their way to buy a levitating banana so they can get home. That, my friends, is sustainability.
Well, you can’t get much more sustainable than perpetual banana-motion.
Plus, “banana” is so efficient to type!!!
banana banana banana banana banana banana
There, that took me 2.6 seconds, and I’m a shit typist. A banana-based economy would save hundreds of typing-hours per annum over one based on any other six-letter production unit.
I think I can hear Robert Merkel banging his head against his keyboard in frustration at where this once-promising thread is heading…!
Chin up, Rob! Did you see David Hetherington’s great Op-Ed in Fairfax today? How does this grab you:
Well worth a read.
FDB, we’re going to need a manifesto.
DAS BANANA
Which clearly articulates the alienation of the modern citizen from his mixed market carbon based economy, and detailing the utopia that will arise from the levitating banana-motion economy. The only problem I think will arise is that bananas are just too efficient, and will have to be balanced with some sort of braking system based on pineapples - the essential production ingredient of the peoples food (pizza in this case).
David Hetherington: “The 2020 summit shows the Government’s willingness to tap into the national brain pool, rather than run a closed shop.”
Craig Mc at #11
“Commodores, the public has been buying them in droves - it’s the #1 car in the country”
Not this year it isn’t.
“Official sales figures for March released yesterday show the Corolla has been Australia’s best-selling car over the first three months of the year.”
Corolla outsells Commodore
“again, presumably you’ve tried the Hyundia Sonata/ Grandeur , Nissan Maxima, toyota camry/aurion.”
Toyota Camry/Aurion is bigger than any car Toyota sells anywhere else in the world, deliberately aimed at the Australian market here and luxury buyers in other western countries. The remainder of cars are similar to the old “mid-size” (1990ish Toyota Camry/Mazda 626) which are significantly smaller and not capable of carrying more than 2 people comfortably (someone my size can drive a 626/camry but if doing so nobody can fit in the back.)
Gandhi: not at all. I’ve wanted a hoverboard ever since I saw Back to The Future II. A banana-powered one, so much the better…
not capable of carrying more than 2 people comfortably (someone my size can drive a 626/camry but if doing so nobody can fit in the back.)
clearly you haven’t tried them then.
From David Rubie… “IBM had a small scale assembly plant at Wangaratta (at least I think they did)”.
You think. You don’t know much about the history of the Australian computer industry do you. The IBM Wangaratta Plant was not small scale. It employed 450 people and using a high amount of automation, built MILLIONS OF PC’s from the PC1 and PS/2 series right through to RS/6000 systems. It also built Apple Mac Power PC processor boards for the world market, and a plethora of other electronics. The plant was the biggest exporter in dollar terms of non-primary produce in Australia in 1995 and a world class plant, being a world first in a number of technologies. Prior to the PC it manufactured IBM Selectric typewriters for the Australasian and SE Asian market. It built the circuit boards and assembled systems. Unfortuntely the plant no longer exists, due to the fiasco of IBM selling the plant and the employees off to a lousy start-up company and in the end almost everyone lost their jobs. I suggest you do some research and learn.
Total IBM employees in 1995: 225347
Total IBM employees in Wangaratta: 450
Percentage of IBM employees in Wangaratta: 0.2%
For IBM, it was small. Thanks for playing though.