• More than 70 million barrels of oil are consumed worldwide every day, a figure expected to increase to 100 million within a decade.
• No one is certain whether oil production will be able to keep up with this demand ? or even how long oil will be available in significant quantities.
• Rises in petrol prices, increases in demand, issues with pollution, and other factors have led to increased calls for alternative energy sources to replace oil.

• Australia has a relatively small population distributed in pockets around a vast land mass, so travelling large distances is a big part of our lives.
• There are over 9.7 million passenger vehicles in Australia, and each of these travels an average of 16 600 kilometres per year.
• Large family sedans and four-wheel-drives continue to be popular even though petrol costs have risen more than 40% in the last five years, and many of these cars are used to carry only the driver.

As a result, much of our day-to-day personal transport is extremely inefficient, leading to higher emissions that can contribute to global warming. Although public transport is available, our sprawling suburbs often make it slow and impractical. Our geography and weather patterns mean we have access to almost unlimited energy resources in the form of solar, wind and hydro power, but we continue to pollute our atmosphere by consuming dwindling reserves of fossil fuels, rather than making use of renewable energy.

Because of all these factors, the UWA REV project has set out to build two cars with which we can change people’s thinking about renewable energy.