The green car - déjà vu all over again?

Now being manufactured in Japan as the Ultrabattery, it looks like a regular car battery, but lasts five times as long and performs much better. Furthermore, it can be produced at about a quarter of the cost of the high-tech batteries in today’s hybrid cars.

Tucked away under the rear seats, the aXcess car also had a lightweight petrol engine that automatically switched on to recharge the batteries when necessary.

This engine, designed to operate at the optimum speed for efficiency and low emissions, was developed by a Sydney company CMC Power Systems Limited. It incorporated a unique crankshaft mechanism which allowed the engine size to be reduced by a third. CMC claimed it had lower noise and vibration, and lower fuel consumption and emissions, than conventional engines.

CMC spent some $2.5 million to develop the 1.4 litre engine specifically for the vehicle, a feat it achieved in only eight months. This expenditure, with no payback from the expected further development of the car, contributed to CMC going into voluntary administration. Its technology, supported by 3,000 shareholders over 20 years, has now been taken over by Malaysian interests.

With a remarkably low cost to government of less than $7 million, Australia nearly got its own “green car” in 2000. Unfortunately its computer control problems meant it could be killed off before it really had a chance to become well known to the Australian community.

The Industry Minister at the time, Ian Macfarlane, later defended the decision to cease funding, saying it had performed its function of marketing Australian components and was never meant to become a production vehicle anyway - but the swiftness of its demise before its trip to the US makes it hard to resist the notion that it was perhaps too successful and was terminated before Australians started actually wanting it to be made.

With the Rudd government to provide $500 million the industry stands a much better chance now than it did with less than $7 million of Howard government and CSIRO money.