Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Tweed. I want to start with the auto industry's biggest challenge, and that is energy use. Right now, the issue is around having a reasonably cost-effective, portable fuel. It's an issue not only with transportation, but in other markets, and it affects the econo

Transport committee  My discussion was more about automobile fuelling stations.

Transport committee  I think buses are probably easier to manage. When you have fleets you can get really high utilization of your fuelling stations. They have known routes and you can manage your fuelling that way. With cars, you have such a broad area to cover that it's much more difficult to manag

Transport committee  A big part of the reason it doesn't exist has to do with how we built up our infrastructure in the country over the last 100 years. We have diesel and gasoline stations. To move to a new fuel costs money and the question becomes: who's going to pay for the new infrastructure? I

Transport committee  Thank you. I think one area we need to encourage or incentivize is home refuelling, because a big part of the infrastructure is already there. It's a cheap way to get started, and it's a way to get the ball rolling. There are home refuellers out there. I think there are new type

Transport committee  I don't see a big problem with procurement issues coming back and forth across the border with the U.S. on that. I'm happy that there are companies in Canada that are involved, such as Westport. I hope Westport is successful. But to answer your question, I don't see a big problem

Transport committee  It is a good question. The question is whether we will have more cars because we make it more economical or easier to own cars. There are a hundred ways to limit the number of cars that people drive. Should one be that fuel is too expensive? I think the answer is no. What we nee

Transport committee  That's another interesting question. I took care of Magna's lithium battery activity in North America for about a year and a half when we were launching that. Right now we're in a development phase, so we've happily set up a new factory in Canada. It's a pilot facility and we inv

Transport committee  That's a very good question. I've been around the world. I've been to Japan—

Transport committee  Okay, I'll give you a quick answer. The answer is that—

Transport committee  I've been around to a lot of battery companies, and our own, and right now the answer is that nobody knows.

Transport committee  Natural gas on the short and medium term has a much bigger potential to be broadly applied. So electric cars will see a small percentage of the vehicles—a very small percent—and natural gas can potentially be a larger percent and have a bigger impact.

Transport committee  Magna today does natural gas, but only at prototype level, such as natural gas fuel tanks. We've done a natural gas vehicle. We can do the integration. We can do the valving and plumbing and so on. So we know how to get involved with it. We believe it's a big part of the future,

Transport committee  Yes, we want to participate.

Transport committee  Decoma does trim. We have a power train group that does power train. We have Magna Steyr. Most of our development activity was done at Magna Steyr.