The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) welcomes the opportunity to provide our views on the ACCC’s Lithium-ion issues paper.
The FCAI is the peak Australian industry organisation representing the importers and distributors of over 99% of new passenger vehicles and light commercial vehicles up to 3.5t Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) and motorcycles sold into the Australia market.
Australia is a small market comprising approximately almost 1.1 million new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles sales each year. This amounts to around only 1.2% of annual, global new vehicle sales.
Following the withdrawal of all domestic manufacturing in 2017, Australia is a technology taker of increasingly complex automotive products particularly as we consider the technological changes that are occurring within the industry.
In the first instance, FCAI points out that motor vehicles imported into Australia are designed and built to comply with Federal regulation under the Road Vehicle Standards Act (RVSA). It is this Act which describes several pathways through which a road vehicle model can be demonstrated to be compliant with the Australian Design Rules (ADRs) and be approved for provision to the Australian market.
The ADRs are nationally consistent and uniform standards, with which road vehicles must comply and which facilitates registration and on-road use by the States and Territories across Australia.
The RVSA includes the Register of Approved Vehicles (RAV) being a publicly searchable database of approved vehicles that are available for supply in Australia.
In line with environmental considerations, FCAI does expect that the light vehicle fleet will increasingly introduce a range of electrified powertrains in various manners. These electrified powertrains can include:
- Hybrid Vehicles (HV)
- Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV)
- Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV)
- Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV)
All electrified powertrains will contain some form of traction battery, most commonly incorporating a Lithium-Ion battery technology including:
- Lithium-Ion Phosphate (LFP),
- Lithium Nickel Cobalt Manganese (NCM) or,
- Lithium Cobalt Aluminium Oxide (LCO)
The following section provides responses to questions raised in the issues paper. Please note that FCAI will only respond to those questions that we believe are relevant to the light vehicle automotive sector.
Read the full FCAI response at the link below.