The green car - déjà vu all over again?

The vehicle was then shipped off at government expense to motor shows throughout Europe and Asia to generate sales for Australian components. But just before it was due to be shipped to the US for another round of motor shows, it became suddenly unpopular within the bureaucracy.

The US trip was cancelled, and aXcess fell into a black hole.

What went wrong? In principle, the car was great, but CSIRO could not get the control algorithm in its computer management system to work properly - so the interplay between the batteries, supercapacitors, generator, motor, petrol engine, accelerator and brakes could not be precisely controlled.

With an unpredictable communication system, the car committed that most grievous of all transportation errors - it couldn’t be relied on to go. Although it could run on the road with its petrol engine supplying power direct to the electric motors, it couldn’t glide noiselessly onto the podiums in the trade fairs on its electric motors alone.

It is said that when some video was taken of it “driving” into a showroom in Europe the camera was carefully angled to conceal the three men crouching on one side to push it along.

When this became known, it gave the Industry Department a pretext to scrap the project. It was a brutal slap in the face for the aXcess team, which had achieved a small miracle under impossibly tight deadlines and with government funding nowhere near enough to put together something so advanced and complex.

Japanese makers Toyota and Honda who saw the car on show in Japan were stunned to learn it cost only $13 million to build - both companies have spent billions developing hybrid technology.

The Australian bureaucracy was influenced by General Motors in Detroit, who were convinced that the way of the future would be hydrogen, not hybrids.

David Lamb says the ECOmmodore, which used the CSIRO technology coupled with the Melbourne-manufactured 4-cylinder engine that has just been given the chop, demonstrated good performance.

“Visiting General Motors US executives were impressed,” he said.

“But the wisdom in Detroit was that hydrogen cars would be on the road by 2008. Since then, GM has realised that hydrogen won’t happen for a long time, and they’re frantically trying to catch up in hybrid technology.”

Why reinvent the wheel? Building on the work that’s already been done might be a good idea. And it might also get the new project going a little earlier than far-off 2011, which is when the Government’s Green Car Innovation Fund is scheduled to cut in.