We read nearly every day of the ever increasing costs of motoring or about the unsustainable damage our cars are still doing to the environment. But, what’s the answer to all of this?

The motor manufacturer paces up and down in his design offices like a caged lion, wondering what he can do to survive the latest onslaught from the expanding ‘green’ lobby.

However, he does have a variety of options available to him, but not all are flavour of the moment. There are the more straight-forward already well-tried ‘engineered’ solutions such as:

· improved aerodynamics (fashionable, but usually short-lived and often leading to very similar or odd looking cars from all the main players

· lighter weight (but still keeping inside the Euro crash star ratings requirements),

· smaller, but higher-performance higher-efficiency engines (to keep up to customer’s expectations),

· automatic stop-start control of the engine (e.g. when in slow moving traffic, or waiting at the lights).

 One of the current hot favourites is being called the Hybrid solution and all the major players are getting their quick-fix hybrid solution ready for the next glitzy motor show. But, what does hybrid mean?

Well, in essence (pardoning the French pun!), if you can fit a relatively low powered (in comparison to the petrol or diesel engine) electric motor somewhere in the drive train, plus, of course, a reasonably sized and weight battery, you can use this electric drive for start off, low speed manoeuvring or steady state cruise whilst there is enough energy in the battery. At this stage the emission level will be zero. There will be sufficient performance to meet most needs of town driving and indeed some cross-country work in relatively flat terrain. But eventually the driver will demand more performance and the main engine will have to cut-in to meet that demand and / or to recharge the battery. More sophisticated systems also allow the electric motor to become a generator to recharge the batteries and to help as a brake at the same time.

These hybrid solutions would appear to be a very attractive solution to all concerned. But there are downsides to these solutions that is often overlooked. For example, their complexity and use of heavy, expensive and sometimes toxic materials (copper, lead or lithium, for example). There is the extra energy required to extract, transport and refine these rare elements in the first place. This must be added to the energy that goes into the manufacture of these new sub-systems. We have a double whammy debit. The extra and weighty components are going to need energy to be accelerated, cornered and braked for the lifetime of the host vehicle.

We can perhaps understand when these systems are adopted on the largest, most expensive and most uneconomical of 4X4s. But as a sensible solution in the majority of cars, can they compete in the most cost effective way?

Is the total through-life energy cost not the more important overall figure we need to be using when making the comparison between the world’s motor manufacturers?