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Establishing hydrogen in the fleet market
Charles Purkess of ITM Power explained that, although they seem a long way off, fleets can expect an increase in the number of practical hydrogen vehicles available from 2015.
"It used to be the case that they were very much demonstration cars, like Honda's FCX Clarity, and you'd be told the price tag was £1m.
"When we met Hyundai to try the iX35 they said 'here are the keys, see you in a couple of weeks'. That really demonstrates where things have got to. There are plans to have 65 stations in place by 2015 and 1000 stations by 2020.
"Car companies are collaborating and there will be a broader offering, between 2015 and 2018, of those vehicles on the roads."
Arval's Mike Waters added: "The Government can learn from what happened with LPG - and that's not to decide for the market which way the market will go. As soon as the Government removed the support for LPG, everything dropped out of it."
Waters also raised the issue of the lack of an infrastructure for hydrogen fuel in the UK, and asked who would pay to cover the cost of setting one up.
Hyundai's Robin Hayles responded: "There are a number of different attitudes. It's a combination of gas companies and infrastructure providers, then you have the vehicle manufacturers - we invest in the technology.
"There are a lot of unknowns at the moment, but at least these issues have been identified and there's a lot of people working towards 'what do we need to do? Who's buying, who's investing?' There is a Government understanding that a level of intervention is needed that is perhaps a lot higher than has gone on so far."
He added that there are moves to better educate younger audiences about hydrogen so it stands more of chance further down the line.
"Within an organisation called Hydrogen London there is the London Hydrogen Schools Challenge. What they do is go into local schools in London, explain the technology and the benefits of it, and they use a competition-based way of doing it.
"So the thinking is that maybe not the next generation but the generation of car buyers after that accept this and will be the users of these cars. It's educating at that level now.
"There's already this buy-in and acceptance of the technology at that age, so in the eight or nine years' time it will take for these people to purchase a car, I would hope the infrastructure will be in place, so it will make it a logical purchase."
Georgina Smith, fleet administrator at Healthcare at Home, agreed that acceptance of new technologies was a generational issue, and something that was likely to improve as younger fleet operators step up to the plate.
"Maybe we should think that in 10 years' time, decision makers are going to have a completely different opinion. I did some ICFM training recently and noticed that there's a lot of new blood in the field now. There are a lot of really young people and they might be more willing to look at new technologies," she said.
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