Brendan Norman, the company’s chief executive who previously worked on hydrogen cars in China, expects a prototype to be ready later this year.
It plans to introduce a hydrogen-powered SUV, heavy vehicles and a taxi/MPV/van. Its SUV named Snowy is expected to start production in 2022.
The operation is looking to employ 100 people by the end of this year, which could ramp up to 5,000 by 2025.
Norman said production could use 80% local content by 2024. That bet is based on a belief that Australia already has most of the skills and materials needed to make items such as supercapacitors and fuel cells, even if the manufacturing scale is not there yet.
“Australia can certainly compete in this because it is high-tech manufacturing and this is something that we feel we should be able to encourage to come back,” he said.
“If we’re producing the bulk of the world’s hydrogen, I’d like to think that we can produce the tools that are required to use it properly.”
H2X’s plan relies less on low labour costs that offshore production provides and more on the value of intellectual property, like Germany’s high-tech factory sector.
In 2017, the last car Australia built rolled out of a General Motors’ plant in the city of Adelaide, ending seven decades of local automotive history and the belief that the country’s factories could ever compete globally.
Three years later, policymakers are once again looking to manufacturing to generate some growth as they scramble to drive the economy through the coronavirus and out of its deepest slump on record.
While Australians are unlikely to buy millions of locally made cars, refrigerators and toasters as they did in the 20th century, a government push that puts manufacturing at the centre of its longer-term recovery plan has strong industry support and has kindled ventures that would have seemed far-fetched half a year earlier.
Behind the pivot is a realisation that Australia has been too reliant on Asia for the supply of essential goods. A recent worsening in relations with China, Australia’s biggest trading partner, has only strengthened that view.
