Thank you very much for the question.
Yes, indeed, we are working on energy-efficient solutions for the automobile. One of the most important ways of decreasing the energy consumption of a car is to decrease the weight of a car. AUTO21 has a very large portfolio of work on lightweight materials. Much of it is actually happening in Quebec. So we are very much working on those kinds of issues.
I won't be commenting on the current events of the auto sector--that's really not the role of a research organization, in my view--but one thing that needs to be appreciated is that the auto industry is a very large global, integrated industry. It's important to realize that there really isn't a boundary around Canada where a different set of rules applies. First of all, we're not a large enough consumer of automobiles to do that. Canada produces between 2.3 million and 2.8 million cars per year. We buy around 1.6 million cars per year. So we actually produce far more vehicles and parts here than we consume.
In addition, about 85% of what we make is exported. A large number of the cars that are bought here are not made in Canada, and a large number of the cars that are made in Canada are exported elsewhere, chiefly to the United States.
The automotive market is very integrated. What we have tried to do in AUTO21 is work with our industry partners to find R and D mandates for Canadian researchers that leverage our skills and our capabilities with their needs. We've been very successful at doing that. Some kinds of research will probably never be done in Canada--when they're being done elsewhere, it doesn't make sense to duplicate--but the products of those research activities will come to the Canadian market when the market demands them.
The other thing to appreciate about the auto industry, I would say, is that a lot of the market forces that you see today are the result of extremely rapid changes. Just to give you some perspective, when we put the AUTO21 proposal together in the fall of 2000, the price of oil was $21 a barrel. It was $23 a barrel when the 9/11 attacks took place. It's $135 a barrel now. It's six times as much. That's a massive increase. In fact, it's gone up by 60% in just a few months.
I'm not defending them, but there's no way the auto industry could meaningfully respond to a change that's this rapid. You just couldn't do that. It costs several billion dollars to develop a new kind of car, so the production capacity and the types of vehicles being made will always lag whenever there's a massive change, and a rapid change, like that.
I hope I've answered your question.