[bobthebilda]

Part of an article from a similar story on saturday

It's not the first time Holden has been linked to electric-powered vehicles.

In 2000 Holden revealed the hybrid ECOmmodore concept car that was developed in conjunction with the CSIRO.

The car used capacitors and batteries as well as a modified body to reduce fuel use.

Despite the innovative technology, though, any plans to fast-track the project were shelved because hybrids at the time were not viewed as viable by Holden executives at the time.

More recently Holden's then Asia-Pacific boss announced it would have a hybrid Commodore on sale by 2010, comments it later walked away from.

Holden have no involvement with the idea, apart from the fact that they are using commodores, which would not seem to be an ideal body for a light weight electric vehicle. However no matter how silly the idea seems, why wouldnt you do it, if the federal government was giving you $3.5 million to build 7 cars. What you could do is buy the internals of a Tesla for $50000 x7 ($350,000), buy 7 commodores ($260,000), marry them together $350,000 and pocket nearly $2.5 million.

I Think senator Carrs comments.

the Senator explained that the $3.5 million grant from the Green Car Innovation Fund was aimed at proving the concept.

"We've got to prove that the concept works," he said. "That's what this project is about. Last year, in this country, we sold 112 fully electric vehicles -- out of nearly a million sales. So clearly there's considerable room for improvement in that number.
"What we want to see is the Australian industry advance, build its capabilities, and then make sure those R&D breakthroughs are commercialised -- actually put into our general production arrangements through our Automotive Transformation Scheme, so they can have further support from the Australian government. That's the objective here. We've got to prove the concept first. That's the point of this whole project, you can't assume that it's already proven, otherwise we wouldn't have invested in it."

How can you not assume its already proven, when we currently have the leaf, the tesla etc etc already on the roads. So the consortium is not aiming to prove that electric cars are compatible with cars that are designed for it, they want to prove that a commodore can be made electric. Something that Holden has given up on, and something that the rest of the worlds automobile industry think a car of the commodores size is not compatible with electrification.