Australia is party to the Paris Climate Agreement, which endeavours to hold the global average temperature increase to below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
In Australia, this has driven a national government position to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
These are big ambitions, and the automotive industry plays a key role in creating technologies that reduce, and ultimately eliminate, CO2 and other greenhouse emissions from vehicles.
On the face of it, it appears the uptake of electric vehicles is the most effective way to reduce transport greenhouse emissions.
We shouldn’t, however, overlook the use of biofuels that can also be zero C02 tailpipe emitting and would allow the continued use of existing technology in internal combustion engines.
And there is hydrogen, not just used as a fuel source for fuel-cell electric vehicles but also as direct fuel injection when blended with conventional fuels and used in internal combustion engines.
While this is not 100 per cent C02 free, it creates valuable pathways to our ultimate C02 targets.
We can view hybrid mixed-energy vehicles, including plug-in electric vehicles that have a medium-sized battery and a small conventional engine, as crucial stepping-stones to our shared climate ambitions.
The automotive industry is not trying to dodge the inevitable here, we’re just applying the same innovation that has kept us mobile for the past 120 years.