As the debate continues over the feasibility of implementing alternative transport fuels, Malaga-based Advanced Engine Components Ltd is making an environmental and cost effective difference through its natural gas engines.
As the debate continues over the feasibility of implementing alternative transport fuels, Malaga-based Advanced Engine Components Ltd is making an environmental and cost effective difference through its natural gas engines.
Advanced Engine Components managing director, and former TransPerth CEO, Tony Middleton said the company had been developing engines for the heavy-duty end of the market, including buses and trucks.
“What we have created is a homogenous fleet of vehicles that comes back to base, like a closed circuit,” he said.
“Re-fuelling stations are generally quite expensive, but that’s why it’s better to have the circuit since you have the one re-fuelling station.”
Mr Middleton said more than 100 buses in Perth are running on natural gas with 35 developed by Advanced Engine Components.
“The government here has made a decision that all the buses in Perth would all be natural gas powered and that is starting to flow into the trucks market as well now,” he said.
Mr Middleton told WA Business News the way to implement gas in Australia would be through the setting of targets.
“In Europe they have set targets for the substitution of natural gas for conventional liquid transport fuels,” he said. “[In Australia] we can’t just look at LPG to replace diesel, it’s not feasible, but you could set a target of say 15 per cent of vehicles powered by gaseous fuels by 2020.”
Mr Middleton said the company had provided a Senate inquiry into future oil supplies and alternative transport fuels with a submission outlining what Australia could do regarding adopting natural gas.
“The federal government is doing its part by providing the Alternative Fuels Conversion Program, which has helped fund 50 per cent of the differential in cost of diesel and gas vehicles,” he said.
Earlier this month, Swaraj Mazda Ltd agreed to a joint natural gas engine development program with Advanced Engine Components and its joint venture partner Vialle Alternative Fuel Systems Private Ltd in India.
“We would look to help develop a light commercial vehicle,” Mr Middleton said. “Mazda have in India 70,000 of these vehicles. They have five truck versions and one bus version.
“We are going through an engine development program with Mazda and by the end of this year we’ll have a product. [Mazda] is talking 2,000 units a year.”
Mr Middleton said the possibilities were endless with the likes of India and China now legislating to enforce natural gas buses as a result of cost and pollution benefits.
Advanced Engine Components has five active natural gas engine development programs in China, three with First Auto Works group and two with Weichai Peterson Gas Engine Co Ltd.
“We won the [First Auto Works group] tender against European, American and Canadian competitors,” Mr Middleton said. “First Auto Works is the biggest vehicle manufacturer in China.
“They are looking to have in their diesel engine range a natural gas product as well.”
Mr Middleton said the deal with Weichai involved the building of a 9.7 litre natural gas engine at the Wuxi Bus Corporation, which would be commissioned in April 2006.
The company has appointed a general manager and staff for its newly-established office and assembly facility in Beijing, China.
Advanced Engine Com-ponents undertakes research, development and commer-cialisation of electronic fuel injection and engine management technologies designed to increase engine power while meeting – or improving on – international exhaust emission standards.
The company’s flagship product is the patented Natural Gas Vehicle System (NGVS), a multi-point sequential electronic gas injection system, which enables engines to be adapted (on the production line or in retro-fit) to use natural gas.
AEC was established in 1984 and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in February 2000.
The Perth hearings of the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee inquiry into future oil supplies and alternative transport fuels are due to start April 11 or 12.
