When it comes to presenting green credentials actually in real life use, Toyota is rarely shy about claiming the high ground - even though there are more than a few who would question the strict transparency of some of their calculations.

But given the overwhelming theme of greenness pervading Frankfurt this week, it’s hardly surprising that it doesn’t take more than a couple of lines of introduction before we hear the magic word ‘Prius’. Right after Thierry Dombreval, Executive Vice President Toyota Motor Europe, opened with ‘most of us here would agree that the greatest challenge facing the world today is environmental change’, and told us that since introducing its Earth Charter in 1992 Toyota has not only been committed to addressing climate change but also determined to lead the industry.

So Toyota’s stated goal is zero emissions, and their chosen tool thus far is hybrid technology – ‘exemplified by Prius, our brand icon’. They launched hybrids into ‘mass’ production 10 years ago, and introduced Prius to Europe in 2000. Today it’s sold in 44 countries, and four out of every five hybrid vehicles on the road is a Prius. Between them, Toyota and Lexus have an industry-leading eleven hybrid models, and passed one million hybrid sales in total earlier this year, with Prius accounting for three quarters of those. It emits just 104 g/km of CO2, uses around 4 litres of fuel per 100km, is wonderful to drive and will ultimately save the planet – no, sorry, we’re starting to sound like the hype, let’s move on.

Toyota are now exploring the possibility of ‘plug-in’ hybrids which additionally can be charged from any power socket – but only at rest, obviously, and only truly reducing CO2 emissions if the ultimate source of the electricity is low or zero CO2, but that’s a factor often conveniently ignored, not so much by Toyota but by electric champions in general.

And this direction leads us to Toyota’s one really significant new offering in Frankfurt, the iQ concept, which they refer to as revolutionary, and which they say ‘will have the same sort of impact on the market that Toyota hybrid technology introduced, 10 years ago, to the world of power trains’. Which is a big claim for one of the smallest cars in the show.

Created at Toyota’s advanced design studio in the South of France and ‘working under the Toyota design philosophy of Vibrant Clarity’, it is good to look at in a toy car way, and truly compact – at less than three metres long, or only 28cm more than a smart and 56 less than the new Fiat 500. Its 3+1 seating layout (that’s three adults plus a child or luggage, but presumably not both) is also clever, and allows Toyota to headline iQ as ‘the world’s smallest, sophisticated and intelligent four-seater concept car’, which it might well be.

 

Did we mention ‘a paradigm shift in small car design’? That’s among the claims, too, but oddly there’s no mention at all of what powers it. Surely it’s not just hot air?