Autocar has an impressive scoop – some very nice shots of the front quarter of Gordon Murray’s upcoming T.25 city car.

With its black plastic bug eyes and castellated lower windscreen, the tiny part of the green T.25 we can see looks very little like Car Magazine’s speculative renderings from October 2008.

Which is good, because Car’s images showed a rather characterless egg - not what we’d hope for from a designer of Murray’s calibre.

Autocar’s article also sheds light on the brand names that Murray has registered as potential trademarks.

As exclusively revealed by GreenMotor.co.uk in January, Murray plans to use the names iStream, iFrame and iCentre. We had assumed that iStream might be the production name of the T.25 car, but according to Autocar it is instead the moniker of Murray’s innovative manufacturing system. We suspect, therefore, that iFrame refers to the structure of the car, and iCentre may refer to the assembly plant design rather than, as we speculated, service centres or dealers.

Murray does have one left-over trademark, which might still make a name for the car: i2.

According to Autocar, a driveable prototype is weeks away. No doubt snappers from the trade press will be loitering in the vicinity of Murray’s Surrey offices in the coming days, hoping to snap a shot of a T.25 in black plastic disguise.

Toyota has told us what will be on its Geneva motor show stand, two of which will be of interest to the greener motorist – although the truly green won’t be schlepping all the way to the land of Alpine horns to ogle cars, of course.

Unsurprisingly, the new Prius will loom large, boasting enough technology to make all the other cars at the show feel like horseless carriages. It offers a head-up display and solar-powered ventilation system as well as the ability to park itself.

“Overall system power has been increased by 22 per cent,” Toyota reminds us in its press release, adding that the Prius’s fuel economy has been improved by 10 per cent and CO2 emissions cut to just 89g/km. These figures do, however, make us wonder what might have been done to the mpg and CO2 figures had they left the overall system power where it was. Perhaps increasing the total pedal-down power makes no difference to the miser-mode figures.

The Prius version 3 goes on sale in the UK in July this year, at a price that’s yet to be announced but will clearly not be on a par with Honda’s £15,500 Insight.

Also destined for UK showrooms in July is the 1.33-litre version of the tiddly Toyota iQ. With 99bhp at its disposal this iQ will be a much faster and more flexible proposition than the current 1.0-litre edition. Toyota says the new engine should furnish 58.9mpg and CO2 emissions of 113g/km when pedalled through a six-speed manual gearbox, helped by a Stop & Start system to cut the engine when stationary. The figures worsen to 55.4mpg and 120g/km if the 1.3 comes equipped with Toyota’s “Multidrive” CVT automatic.

The currently available 1.0-litre iQ 5-speed manual is still the greener option, of course. It manages an official 65.7mpg – or 71.6mpg if you’re trying hard – and 99g/km.

Honda has announced prices for its upcoming Insight hybrid. The reasonably lavishly equipped SE model will cost from £15,490 on the road. This standard model offers enough bits and bobs to make a Mini buyer wince, including 15-inch alloy wheels, a stability assist system, electric windows all round, climate control, heated and power-folding mirrors, a front armrest, on-wheel audio controls, iPod hookup, ISOFIX child-seat mountings, active headrests, lots of airbags, and multi-function, split level dashboard (whether you like the latter or not).

The ES costs another £1,300 at £16,790 on the road, which is a not unreasonable hike for its larger 16-inch alloys, fog lights, privacy glass, cruise control, heated front seats, auto lights and wipers, USB socket, rear armrest, map light, tweeters, cuddly toy, and paddle-shifts to engage pseudo-ratios, to make you feel like you control the CVT automatic gearbox. Plus a bit of leather on the wheel and gearknob.

Finally another £1,600 on top of that will bring the total to £18,390 and get you an ES-T model, stacked with a fancy voice-recognition navigation system with live traffic updates, plus a singing and dancing Bluetooth system for your phone.

No word on the cost of leather chairs, as yet.

For comparison, Honda’s Civic Hybrid ES, which roughly matches the spec of the Insight ES, costs £17,120 on the road. The £330 difference is not huge. The Civic is larger and more powerful, but the Insight is newer, funkier and more versatile.

The base model Insight, which is a full £1,630 less than the cheapest Civic IMA (and £2,380 less harmful to your wallet than the cheapest Toyota Prius) will no doubt be the big seller in the range.

The SE has an official rating of 101g/km CO2 and 64.2mpg on the combined cycle. The two ES models score 105g/km and 61.4mpg. All three variants currently qualify for tax band B, and a £15 tax disc.

Toyota will be pleased with the crash performance of its tiny iQ under the new Euro NCAP impact test procedure. The diminutive city car almost put its much bigger brother, the new Avensis, to shame.

The iQ scored the maximum five stars overall, with a score of 91% for front-seat passenger protection. The much larger Avensis also scored five stars overall and 90% for adult protection.

The tests showed that small cars don’t have to perform poorly in impact tests – Ford was no doubt disappointed with the four stars notched up by its new Ka under the older NCAP testing regime late last year.

There’s not much room in the back of an iQ, so it’s no surprise that the scores for rear-seat child protection were not so great – 71% for the iQ versus 86% for the Avensis. Incidentally, it looks like the tiny proportions of the iQ caused headaches for the testers at Euro NCAP. In the crash test pictures and footage you can see that the test measurement equipment wouldn’t fit in the boot and had to be mounted on a lashed-up shelf bolted to the rear of the car.

Of course there is an elephant in the room where crash tests are concerned – the barrier tests effectively simulate an impact with an equal-sized car. When driving a tiddler, however, you are much more likely to meet something bigger coming the other way, with more momentum than you. The basic physics of force equalling mass times acceleration dictates that the lighter car will undergo more severe deceleration in a head-on smash, with an increased likelihood of injuries as a result. As a consequence, crash test data can’t really be used to assess the relative safety of differently sized cars in the real world.

Driving carefully, maintaining a good gap, not driving when tired and driving a bit more slowly can all help increase your safety, no matter what size of car you choose.

Lots of mainstream manufacturers have tried to award themselves some environmental credentials by hatching a specialist green brand. In many cases these brands signify nothing more substantial than the fitment of lower-friction tyres and longer gear ratios to an existing diesel. Some of these labels are now well known, others less so, but are any of them any good as brands in themselves? Are the words memorable? Are they meaningful? Do they press the right buttons? Are they classy or cringeworthy? Here, for your amusement, is our countdown of our favourite 10.

10. DRIVe – Volvo
Pronounced “drive-ee”, Volvo’s envirobrand is minimal in the extreme, as is our enthusiasm for it. The small “e” presumably stands for environment, or economy, or efficiency, or something. We’re not sure. Also, we can’t help noticing that DRIVe is just one letter short of drivel.

9. Eco Drive - Fiat
Fiat has taken the Ronseal approach to naming its green brand. While Eco Drive has the virtue of being highly descriptive, it’s not going to engender any warm feelings or trigger instant recognition among lovers of emotive Italian metal. Incidentally the same “does exactly what it says on the tin” approach has been applied to Fiat’s petrol-saving engine management system – called, with Latin flair, Start&Stop. We’ll stop now.

8. BlueMotion – Volkswagen
Including the word “motion” in your green brand is a risky move. As Rolls-Royce famously discovered when contemplating the name “Silver Mist”, it’s best to avoid subtle references to poop in motor naming – “mist” being roughly equivalent to “crap” in German. We can’t help feeling that a blue motion is something you should see your doctor about, and quick. Making matters worse, at the bottom of the Volkswagen environmental range is the Polo BlueMotion, which unfortunately is a bid of a turd.

7. Blue Lion – Peugeot
Not as bad as the Red Lion, but still sounding quite a lot like a pub. Also makes us think of the Blue Cross animal hospital charity, which probably doesn’t treat many hypothermic African predators. Maybe it’s the mental image of a frozen feline, but somehow this brand just leaves us cold.

6. Airdream - Citroën
A little bit of fresh air is welcome in motoring terms, dreams less so, given that falling asleep at the wheel is officially not good. Air is the syllable trying to remind us of the environmental side of things, connecting to the idea of clean air, but dream – as in pipe dream – is not a word that suggests determined action. All in all Citroën has chosen a name that puts us in mind of an inflatable mattress. Uncomfortable and not a serious long-term proposition. Yawn.

5. GreenLine – Skoda
GreenLine sounds quite a lot like a bus company, which is not entirely inappropriate given Skoda’s no-frills approach to transport. It has the word “green” in it, rather than the much vaguer and more voguish “blue”, which again suits Skoda's businesslike demeanour. There’s no dynamism to the name, though, again like Skoda making an appeal to the head not the heart. We admit to a grudging admiration.

4. BlueEfficiency – Mercedes-Benz; and EfficientDynamics – BMW
We lump together the two big German brands because they’ve both chosen to reinforce national stereotypes by concentrating on the concept of efficiency. Mercedes plumps to pair it with the over-familiar blue – the colour of clean skies and the earth viewed from space, in case you hadn’t noticed. BMW manages to coin a green brand that actually ignores the earth, the environment, the colours green and blue (despite the blue sky in its propellor logo) and instead concentrates on dynamism, which it does best, and lack of waste, which it is increasingly doing better than its rivals. We can only approve.

3. Econetic – Ford
A portmanteau neologism, pairing eco and kinetic (as in movement). Clever, but not smug. It’s a meaningful and memorable term, and is attached to some attractive cars that will actually make a difference by being bought and used by lots of people.

2. Minimalism - Mini
Actually just another name for EfficientDynamics, Minimalism is a great term to describe the Mini’s raft of energy-saving measures, including stop-and-start and an intelligent, regenerative alternator. Like most things to do with the Mini’s marketing, Minimalism is a bit clever-clever, but we love it none the less. It works in a Ronseal way, being an ordinary word that describes exactly what the aim is – using less to achieve the same – but it’s neat and appealing in a way that Fiat’s Eco Drive can only dream about. Very nearly our winner.

1. Ecomotive – Seat
Auto Emoción is Seat’s tagline, and the Spaniards have done a much finer job than Fiat’s Italians at injecting a sense of passion into their economy brand. Ecomotive, a portmanteau of eco and emotive also manages to suggest motion, plus – from “motive” – a sense of purpose. A wonderful brand that packs a lot of meaning into a modest number of letters. It’s our green brand champion – from a naming standpoint at least. We wonder if the Ecomotive cars themselves are any good?

So that’s our top 10. It’s not exhaustive – we couldn’t think of anything to say about Hyundai’s copycat i-Blue and Renault’s me-too Eco2, for example.

So, what is your favourite eco brand, and why?

For reasons best known to itself, Mitsubishi – Japanese maker of the perennially nearly-here electric-drive i-Miev – name-checked a 109-year-old electric car called La Jamais Contente in a recent press release.

This would make sense if the pioneering battery car had some sort of connection with the Japanese maker, but if there is a link we can’t find it. La Jamais Contente, as the name suggests, was a French affair, sitting on Michelin tyres, powered by 750kg of Fulmen batteries and Postel-Vinay motors, and with a body coach-built by J. Rothschild & Fils of Paris. It was driven by a Paris-based Belgian called Camille Jenatzy.

La Jamais Contente (which means “never satisfied”) is notable for being the first car of any kind to exceed 100km/h (about 62mph), a barrier breached during a land-speed-record run in the spring of 1899.

It was therefore also the first car capable of posting a 0-60mph time, but alas history does not appear to record how long this emotive sprint actually took.