IMO, Australia backed the wrong horses in the auto manufacturing race post WW2. In the early 1950's taxpayer support was deemed necessary to establish and maintain an auto manufacturing industry for economic /security
reasons due to WW2 crippling our transport systems .
Nowadays, security of petroleum supply is by far more important to our national security due to our 30 day petroleum reserves. Despite this, successive Governments have ignored this critical shortfall of petroleum while pumping $billions of taxpayers' funds into Toyota, GM & Ford. And what have we got for all that now? Like the Mitsubishi plant site in Adelaide; potential building sites well located & owned by multinationals.
But back to the serious question of Aussie car manufacturing. IMO, rather than chasing volume and the consequent
ecomomy of scale, we should be planning low volume, high price tropical luxury car that surpasses what is already
on offer globally. We need features like solar collectors to run accessories such as air conditioning, battery charging
and other accessories while being rugged enough to hold up well in desert/semi-desert conditions. We also need to be
the top producer of tropical diesel engines which can give long service lives in ambient temperatures up to 50 degrees C.
We lost our high volume export market to the ME due to lack of luxury diesel cars post the GFC . Third world tropical countries have a growing market for luxury -reliable-low tech- tropical vehicles that afford occupants personal security but don't look like military SUVs.
Our starting point should be a diesel engine which is fuel efficient, tropically durable and simple control systems
suitable for 3rd world servicing and repairs. Just imagine a 2017 hi-tech luxury car stranded on the edge of the desert and no helicopter available to fly-in sophisticated electronic diagnostic equipment and electronic parts/gismoes?
Unlike Japan, Korea & Germany, we have all the raw materials; all we need need the brains! We are shit-hot when it comes to sport but piss-poor when it comes to engineering & business.
mm
