Professor Edgar Morgenroth:

The Deputy has asked a very good question. Remarkably, in many cities, even in Germany, diesel has increasingly been used as a fuel for many years even though suitable technologies were available. Let us take electricity, as an example. I grew up in a city that had electric buses. The buses were powered using overhead lines and no tracks thus making them cheaper than a tram system. Such buses existed back in the 1960s and maybe before then. Many larger cities in Germany have a good public transport system that includes trams, which are powered by electricity. They have also invested in electric buses and compressed natural gas. The latter is being trialled in this country at present. There are cities in Germany where vehicles, particularly municipal vehicles such a buses, are run on gas.

I wish to note an interesting development. The German post office could not find a suitable vehicle so it ended up buying a company and now manufactures electric vans really cheaply. A professor who worked in the University in Aachen developed a cheap electric van. He wanted one of the big manufacturers to produce electric vans but he got no offers. The German post office wanted such a vehicle and as it could not buy one it ended up buying the professor's company. Now the German post office manufactures and sells electric vehicles. It is a rather strange story but it shows that the market does not always supply what is needed to make a change. Therefore, we will have problems trying to make a change in every area, which is the biggest challenge at present.