20 May 2011

 Holden welcomed the recent announcement by the Federal Government awarding $39.8 million from the Green Car Innovation Fund to bring fuel-saving innovations to Australia’s favourite car.

The co-investment funding, part of the Government’s New Car Plan for a Greener Future, will allow Holden to develop a range of fuel efficiency and carbon emission reduction technologies and features for future Commodore models.

Together the innovations, including aluminium body panels to reduce vehicle weight and improved aerodynamic performance, are designed to help reduce fuel consumption by more than 7 per cent.

This reduction in fuel consumption would save around 3.6 million litres of fuel and reduce CO2 emissions from the Commodore fleet by around 9,000 tonnes a year1.

Holden has worked to continuously improve the environmental performance of Commodore with new fuel-saving technologies like Active Fuel Management on V8 models and Spark Ignition Direct Injection (SIDI) on V6 powered vehicles.

The success of Holden’s product development program, and co-funded programs like the new locally-made Cruze, shows new vehicles and technologies have to be affordable and return real world savings for the environment and for Australian drivers.

Holden is also continuing to develop other low emission and alternative fuel solutions in their Ecoline portfolio including a dedicated LPG Commodore and E85 flex-fuel capability on the 3.6 litre SIDI V6 engine later this year.

This is the second grant Holden has received through the Green Car Innovation Fund. Holden also received $149 million over three years to bring a small car into production at HVO, making Cruze the only small car built in Australia.

Cruze was Holden’s largest engineering and manufacturing program since VE Commodore and enabled Holden to return to a second shift at HVO in 2010.