By saying hydrogen fuel cell vehicles ‘aren’t necessary’ won’t this report provide an ideal excuse for industry not to invest in r&d on such new technologies, does it not give them permission to do little or nothing on this?

We need to be clear that while we don’t believe fuel cell vehicles (and electric vehicles) are needed to meet the targets we’ve defined, they may play an important role – and especially in terms of continuing efficiency improvements for new vehicles after 2030 (for which we don’t currently have a target for new vehicles – 2030 is as far as we go).

For example, for OECD the GFEI 50% target translates roughly into moving from an average of 180 g/km CO2 for vehicles in 2005 to 90 g/km by 2030.  To move below 90 we will likely need to move toward plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles.