Martin Ward, CAP's manufacturer relationships manager, scours the globe for the world's insider fleet knowledge

Monday

A trip to Oslo to drive two hydrogen-powered cars – the Mazda5 and RX-8.

Why Norway? It has a ‘hydrogen highway’ – a 370-mile pipeline from Stavanger to Oslo with outlets where vehicles can refuel on hydrogen.

When you get into a sports car you expect it to be quick, but this isn’t the case with the RX-8 Hydrogen as it only produces 100bhp (the regular petrol-engined version offers 231bhp)

Hydrogen combusts with very low energy, making it less powerful.

The Mazda5 mini-MPV really is a clever package.

Unlike the RX-8, the 5 uses hybrid technology where the battery pack is charged by the engine and, additionally, has regenerative braking.

This enables the vehicle to run solely on electric power and the bonus is that only water vapour comes out of the exhaust.

It has a range of around 124 miles but it can be converted to run on petrol at the press of a switch on the dashboard.

Mazda and other manufacturers have proved we can run a car on hydrogen, so it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a reality in the UK.

Wednesday

A short hop to the Croft circuit in Yorkshire for GM UK Fleet’s driving day where more than 100 guests tried their skills at driving some VXR models around the track.

More importantly though, GM had its green models there, including several Vauxhall ECOflex cars.

In uncertain times it was good to see so many participants and GM putting on a great show and demonstrating it is business as usual.

Friday

I’ve been using a Volkswagen Passat BlueMotion2 with stop/start for a couple of weeks and have to report the amazing fuel consumption it has achieved.

On a motorway run, it easily shows more than 60mpg on the on-board computer, and on average it is managing around 55mpg.

With this level of fuel economy from such a large car, do we really need hybrids?

Highly efficient diesel and petrol engines are the focus for the immediate future, and there will still be a huge market for these high economy cars in the used market.

BlueMotion is a masterpiece in technology, but putting my BBC impartiality hat on for a second, other makes are available.