Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Automotive Australia 2020 vision

(School Greetings from room N101 at the ANU, where Dr. Matthew Doolan (Engineering) is talking on "Automotive Australia 2020 - A roadmap for the Australian Automotive Industry". The Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Automotive Technology prepared an "Automotive Australia 2020 vision" to the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research in 2009. The CRC has now delivered a further report on areas the Australian industry should concentrate on. This is expected to be released by the government in the next few weeks. Matthew was unable to give details of what is in the new report, as it is awaiting approval for release by Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. Senator Carr. Matthew emphasised the communication of the strategy is very important. Matthew also emphasised the potential synergy with other CRCs (the Auto CRC seems to have done more than most).

The strategy is specifically for passenger motor vehicles, but
Matthew pointed out that many could also be applied to commercial vehicles. This would be a good strategy, in a talk last week, one of the founders of Seeing Machines described now technology developed at ANU for use in passenger cars instead ended up being used first in trucks for the mining industry. Vehicles for the mining industry would appear to be a natural area for Australia to concentrate on. Mining is important to Australia. Also, as Seeing Machines found, it is much easier to bring a product to market for mining vehicles than for passenger cars (and also much more profitable).

Another area for industry is lightweight military vehicles, such as the Hawkei Protected Military Light Vehicle (PMV-L) .

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