The car was chosen from a final shortlist of ten “green” cars which were all put through their paces by six of the United Kingdom’s leading environmental and transport experts. The other nine cars in contention for the prize were the Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric, Citroen C1 ev’ie electric, Ford Fiesta ECOnetic, Toyota iQ, Volvo S40/V50 DRIVe start-stop, Volkswagen Passat BlueMotion 2, third-generation Toyota Prius hybrid, new Honda Insight hybrid, Citroen C3 Picasso compact-MPV and the BMW 318d saloon.

Having a more compact, and therefore more lighter, power-train, the Prius is greener than ever before. It has an official combined fuel economy touching 72.4 mpg and its CO2 emissions are only 89g/km, which is an impressive 14% improvement over the current model. The new Prius utilises a new 1.8 litre petrol engine (four cylinders), as opposed to the 1.5 litre engine in the current model. This improves overall fuel economy as well as giving additional driver control.