Greener-Than-Thou!

Starting in the mainstream market and buyers could poke round the now-familiar Peugeot iOn electric car which has a range of 80 miles and a matching top speed. Citroen on the other hand were grandstanding, wowing visitors with their all-electric sports car concept, the thoroughly diminutive and slinky Citroen Survolt.

Back on planet Earth, Seat showed off its IBe electric coupe concept that won't actually be released but illustrated that the Spanish brand's commitment to an electric-powered future while Honda's soon-to-be-released CR-Z hybrid showed that going green can actually look cool.

Making the biggest wave was Audi when it unveiled its smart-looking A1 e-tron. It's an interesting proposition that uses a combustion engine solely to recharge the electric motor's batteries, giving the car a range of over 150 miles. The headline-grabbing figure though was its stonking 149mpg and its absurdly low CO2 emissions count of 44g/km.

Everyone expected mainstream car makers to show-off their eco cars though -more eyebrow-raising was how the middle and premium brands were besieging us with green concepts too. They're all at it - Lexus and its A1-bating hybrid hatchback, the CT200h; BMW and its concept ActiveHybrid 5; Mercedes with its plug-in hybrid F800 concept; Lotus and its Evora 414E Hybrid; and even Ferrari and Porsche were getting in on the act with their own takes on green motoring - or at the very least, their testbeds for future planet-saving cars.

The most desirable was undoubtedly the Porsche 918 Spyder concept, the spiritual sucessor to the epic Porsche Carrera GT - unlike its forefather though, the 918 is a plug-in hybrid that is claimed to do 94mpg and emit a mere 70g/km of CO2; not bad for a sports car that can (in theory) accelerate to 0-60 in less than 3.2 secs...

For all us neighsayers who think that going green will kill the joy of driving, the likes of Porsche and Ferrari could actually prove the exact opposite: that saving the planet could be, fun. It has to be.

Adam Phillips, 25th March 2010