New-car manufacturing "not where the future lies" in Australia: Why the Nissan Patrol Warrior and Toyota HiLux electric conversions are the answer

New-vehicle manufacturing will never return to Australia – at least not as we knew it. 

Setting up full-scale production of a new car – as we saw with the Holden Commodore or Ford Territory – would be a $2 billion exercise today, says Engineering Director and Premcar partner Bernie Quinn. 

Having been involved with Ford’s FPV program and Premcar’s latest remanufacturing operation producing Australian-focused off-road capable Nissan Navara and Patrol Warriors, Quinn is intimately aware of the challenges.

When CarsGuide asked about the viability of a full-on new-vehicle program, Quinn summed it up simply: “That’s not where the future lies. That would be awesome, but I just don’t think that’s going to happen.

“What we are proposing – and what we’re doing – is secondary manufacturing. Taking global products which have been manufactured in low-cost countries, like Thailand, and adapting those to the Australian market. 

“There’s no reason why that can’t apply to EVs. And there’s no reason why that couldn’t apply to an EV conversion of a dual-cab ute, for example,” says Quinn.

You might have spotted the ROEV project that had aspirations of taking HiLuxes and Rangers and converting them to electric vehicles – Premcar was involved on the engineering side. 

“We were working with ROEV but they’ve since changed their strategy and they’re not going to go ahead with that conversion.”

ROEV has pivoted into artificial intelligence-driven software that can predict the most efficient vehicle type and powertrain for certain use cases. But Bernie still sees a future in localisation projects.

“There’s 20,000 dual-cab utes in the Pilbara. The companies that work in the mining industry in the Pilbara have ESG [environmental, social, and governance] requirements – corporate requirements – that are beyond government legislation.

“So if they want to say ‘we’ve got to be all-electric by 2030’, well, there’s no vehicle that can do that. How would you service that market? Well, you might do an EV conversion. That’s what that project was all about,” explains Quinn. 

He notes that it would cost “a few million” to service that demand, far less than the $2 billion to engineer and produce a ground-up vehicle here. Only LDV offers a basic electric ute in Australia with manufacturers like Toyota and Ford dragging their heels on this type of vehicle. 

And when Australian vehicle manufacturing ended for good in October 2017 with the final Holden Commodore ‘VF II’ the people with knowledge didn’t necessarily disappear from the scene. 

Many remain here, now being employed by companies such as Premcar, Walkinshaw and RMA automotive to work on conversions, upgrades and localisation programs.

Premcar has delivered 10,000 Warriors since 2018, while EV ute conversions have gone a little quiet, although SEA electric is still around.

In simple terms, Australian manufacturing isn’t dead. The future just looks very different to Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons.