Our car industry was very unlucky. They all chose to develop a new car platform at just the wrong time. When they did the development Oz wanted a largish 6 cylinder car, & nothing else would do.

Over the many years & tens or hundreds of millions of dollars they spent on these new cars, the market started to change. The change was only fully established about the time the companies were starting to market their new cars.

Make no mistake, the companies were developing the right cars when they started, but were overtaken by fashion.

Mitsubishi actually developed a very good car, but their past failures with Magna reliability killed them before the new car could help.

Holden & Toyota had also been caught with a very good last era car, & had to recoup too much development cost with a dinosaur, before they could try again.

Both also have overseas parent companies who may not want a small car built in Oz.

Even there Holden have tried with the Cruise, but with our production costs they still lose money even when selling it at $5000 more than equivalent imports.

Mitsubishi had to give up, Ford did not spend the full cost of developing a new model, & are going before they lose much more money, & even the mighty Toyota seem to have lost the plot. The once mighty, unkillable Hilux is trading on a fading reputation, & no one has ever wanted their front drive Oz built sixes anyway. They are unlikely to be able to support a components industry, so will follow Holden.

Can Oz have a VIABLE car industry, certainly not with our present cost structures it can't. A perhaps more important question is can South Oz survive, without all those inflated pay packages flowing into the place.

Pity the Adelaide weather is not nicer, all the upcoming very cheap housing would make it a good retirement town, apart from the lousy weather.

GMH has announced that they are closing manufacturing in Australia in Q4 2017.

Rhosty, does that price of NG at 40 cents a cubic metre include compression to a volume of 1 litre ?

Further to previous comments I have not heard that the life of fuel cells has been increased.

David Leigh;
The various biofuels are proving to be not viable and companies making
them have been going broke in the US. Brazil, using sugar cane seems
to be an exception although I not know is what the pump price.
The major problem is the poor ERoEI.

Maybe now is a good time to redefine how we use cars.

So here is a different slant on the problem of cars and how we use them.

http://crudeoilpeak.info/world-car-production-grows-3-times-faster-than-global-oil-supplies

So in the long run it must mean that will will have to use drastically
different cars than those that follow the US/AUS favourite type.
Four Wheels Drives look like being dinosaurs and as for V8 racing then
how long can dinosaur racing continue.

I was at the local primary school the other day at 3pm and I was
amazed at the number of four wheel drives and transition models that
were there picking up the kids.
I had previously heard of this but had not realised the magnitude.
It must have been close to 50%.

No matter which way you twist the story there will be a major change
in the design of the cars we drive.
Could this be one of the reasons for Ford & GM pulling the plug ?

bazz, ethanol is competitive with petrol when the price of petrol is 60c/l

Slasher1, ethanol provides about 60% of the energy that petrol provides.
so that means ethanol has to be 60% of the price of petrol to break
even so has to be about $1-00 a litre. A bit different to your figure.

The interesting comments on here however do not take into account a
trend that is now showing up.
Young people are not buying cars in the numbers previously bought.
Also the yearly mileage per car is also falling.
Together with Generals Motors also observing this trend in both Europe
and the US, and other probably more significant factors, has driven
their new policy of withdrawing back to the USA.

Nothing done by Australian governments can change GM's new policy,
they have much bigger fish to fry.