Tag: hybrid cars

Senator Carr's office announced last week that it will invest $63 million to bring production of Toyota’s next-generation, four-cylinder engine to the company's plant in Altona, Victoria. The Altona plant currently employs 320 people. By way of comparison, the much lauded Commercialisation Australia fund has been allocated $244 million over the four years 2011 to 2014. That's $61 million a year. Which option, do you think, will create more jobs?

So while this $US32.5 million US Government funding for UltraBattery is certainly a tremendous validation for the technology and the CSIRO researchers who developed it, the international licensing option pursued means that Australia will, in all likelihood, only receive couch change from what stands to be an extremely lucrative venture for the foreign companies (Furukawa Battery Company and East Penn) that are actually doing the commercialisation.