Mr. James Cogan:

Norway and the Netherlands have been hurt very badly because they went for electric vehicles very enthusiastically and invested major amounts of money in them. In the context of the average electric vehicles in the first main batch in the Netherlands, it cost €85,000 in Government subsidies to get them on the road. That was a country that was very ambitious to do it and that was prepared to do it by popular consensus. It failed because people were really using petrol and diesel. The authorities could not get a transfer to normal consumer buying power. The whole electric vehicle movement is suffering big teething troubles. Norway can afford to throw as much money at these things as it wants because it is a massively wealthy country. It can afford to carry out all kinds of experiments and then step back and try something else.