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The Scots have long seen themselves as practical, inventive people.
Indeed, history credits a Scotsman, Robert Davidson, with building the first-ever electric vehicle. And that was almost two centuries ago, in 1837.
With a pedigree like that, it's perhaps not surprising that Scotland is forging ahead with practical plans for low carbon road travel, while the political debate further south remains largely mired in controversy over high speed rail.
The Scottish government agency Transport Scotland recently published a roadmap for the region's transition to electric and hydrogen vehicles over the next 35 years. It sees fleets playing a leading role in driving innovative approaches to business mobility.
Transport Scotland says: "Instead of judging plug-in vehicles as a like-for-like replacement for fossil-fuelled equivalents, fleet managers should be encouraged to change the way that they operate vehicles to optimise efficiencies and create a broader base of applications for EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs."
The report also recognises that "quantifying the financial, operational and reputational benefits of EVs will be central to advancing their adoption by fleets".
Obviously you can't quantify what you don't have, so Scotland is investing £14m in pump-priming measures between now and 2015.
This public funding will cover grants and interest-free loans to help companies to acquire EVs, install charging infrastructure and pay for mobility consultancy.
Scotland also plans to install fast recharging points at minimum intervals of 50 miles on its trunk road network and to halve urban use of combustion vehicles by 2030 (over 80% of Scots live in towns and cities).
There's no doubt that these commitments are excellent news for fleet operators who want to reap the benefits of integrated mobility management - not to mention reducing their exposure to volatile liquid fuel prices in the future.
Even so, at this very early stage in the transition to alternative fuels, you could ask whether the Scots are being canny or just getting carried away?
I guess that one way to answer that is to look at the bill. If Scotland keeps up its current rate of public spending on low carbon mobility, it will spend around £150 million by 2032.
That investment will go a long way towards delivering a switched-on electric vehicle infrastructure that should be easily accessible by 80% of the population and all of Scotland's major businesses.
To put that into perspective, £150 million is 0.3% of the projected cost of building HS2 as far as Sheffield.
From a fleet perspective, that looks a pretty canny use of money to me.
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