Now is the time to revive Australia’s automotive manufacturing sector, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers – Australasia (SAE-A).
The Asia-Pacific’s peak auto engineering body this week outlined its vision for a family of electric, autonomous, composite and modular Australian-made emergency vehicles that could kickstart the dormant local car-making industry.
What’s more, the SAE-A has partnered with transportation design company Delineate, whose clients include Tesla, Google, Honda, Ford and Nissan, to imagine “what a 21st century police car might look like”.
It says a modular family of specialist vehicles all based on the same platform – including a police car, ambulance and perhaps even a light military vehicle – could be all-electric, autonomous, built from advanced composites and produced in volumes of 50,000-100,000 per year for both domestic and export sales.
SAE-A chairman and chief executive Adrian Feeney said the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of local car manufacturing, and that there was a solid business case for investing in the design, development and manufacturing of low-volume, high-tech and highly specialised vehicles in Australia.
“What we propose is not a 20th century mass production concept, but rather a 21st century high-tech manufacturing exercise that plays to our Australian strengths,” he said.
“The car factories we once had were billion-dollar plants with a hugely expensive foundry and engine shop, body presses and weld lines just to produce the basic body and driveline.
“By contrast, our police car proposal would use the same type of efficient low-volume body production already used to perfection by Paccar to build Kenworth trucks in Melbourne.
“The driveline would be electric, with proven savings in materials and manufacturing costs, backed by Australia's wealth of lithium and emergent battery industry.
“And we should never forget that all these technologies will preserve a level of expertise that will be priceless next time we face a crisis such as a pandemic.”
The key to a reborn Australian car industry is to make the most of what our car and component manufacturers had always done better than others, said Feeney.
“We propose to start with a car no other country could build. 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,” he said.
“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.
“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.”
Feeney said that if Australia moves now to harness its engineering expertise while it still exists, it can design and develop the cars of the future and then build them profitably in existing factories.
“The time is right to put money and political will behind our engineers and our manufacturers and rebuild a specialist car industry that can be the envy of the world,” he said.
“Australian police forces buy up to 5000 cars each year, each with tens of thousands of dollars in special equipment added," he said.
“Our approach would put the money and effort into producing a modest volume of highly specialised vehicles, while avoiding the massive capital costs of a big-volume factory.
“We've seen this sort of thing before, with specialist manufacturers building postal and ambulance vehicles, not to mention our thriving coach and truck manufacturing industries.
“By targeting a market with very specific needs, we can own that market long term, and by dramatically reducing the capital cost, we completely re-write the financial equation.”
Feeney said the SAE-A hopes to generate interest from government and the private sector, before a feasibility study attempts to take the concept to the next level.