When the Motor Show comes to my home town, you just know I'm going to go all out. This is the first of a series of articles about the Melbourne Motor Show - not a large Motor Show by world standards, but this year, there are more new unveilings and locally relevant cars and concepts on show than ever before. For those of you who are international (not Australian) readers, don't worry - most of these articles will be highly relevant to you too.

So I've started with the Ford Fiesta ECOnetic - which is already sold in the UK, but will soon arrive here in down under. This is one of the most important cars of the Motor Show this year, because, crucially, the Fiesta ECOnetic aims to be the most economical car available in Australia when it launches later this year. How economical is it? Try just 3.7 Litres of diesel per 100 km, and on the environmental front, less than 100 grams of CO2 emissions per kilometre. Which, in Australia - where the hyper-economical cars of Europe are currently not available - is a revelation. Definitely beats the Toyota Prius for green-credentials, anyway, which is fine with me, because I don't like it very much.

The crucial difference between the Ford Fiesta ECOnetic and the aforesaid Prius is clearly price. The ECOnetic is set to be priced at around $20,000 - which makes helping the environment within the reach of so many people. This is the way we have to save the environment until the electric cars arrive - not wacky hybrids that are ugly, environmentally unfriendly to make, and aren't particularly efficient. This car even has a decent amount of power - 66kW and 200Nm, if you please. There seems to be no downside to the ECOnetic, because not only is it economical, it is a real car, and has real performance, and a price-tag that is well and truly in the real world. And if the Fiesta ECOnetic sells well, Ford might also bring the Focus ECOnetic and Mondeo ECOnetic to Australia, which sounds like it's exactly what the doctor ordered.

Greenies, start your engines. Turbo-diesel engines, I mean.

MELBOURNE 2009: Ford Fiesta ECOnetic Slaps Hybrids in the Face

I like green cars - I like cars that are environmentally friendly, but I've never really like the Toyota Prius. Why? Other Prius-haters cite figures of fuel consumption that apparently aren't that economical, some people say a European diesel is more efficient, Toyota has been accused of halting greencar progress, etc. - but I'm a lot more simplistic. I believe that the latest generation of green cars should be accessible to the wider world, not just green fanatics - green cars should become the "people's car" of the new millenium. But average joes don't want to drive something that looks like my bathroom soap and pretends to be too technologically advanced for simple minds like mine. In this way, the Prius' appeal is limited, and it's environmental impact (although debatable, anyway...) remains limited. Which is sad, and it almost seems like Toyota does this on purpose - the Honda FCX Clarity doesn't look bad, neither does the Chevy Volt (well, it looks more normal than the Prius does, at least give me that). But anyway, this is the new, 2010 Toyota Prius. Basically the story is "more of the same". The new model does refine the concept slightly however.

It doesn't get lithium-ion battery technology like the Chevrolet Volt (the Toyota remains with nickel-hydride), but it has become even more fuel efficient, even though the 1.5 Litre petrol engine has been upsized to a more powerful 1.8 Litre. Hopefully now the Prius won't be as slow as we remember it was, but Toyota won't speculate on exact efficiency figures just yet - I will keep you posted. Instead, they've announced a 0-100kmh acceleration figure: 9.8 seconds, which puts it only one tenth of a second slower than the Corolla.

What Toyota really have been bragging about is the drag coefficient of the new Prius - the lowest in the production car world. At 0.25, it surprised even me, but I suppose it a car looks like a piece of soap it had better be aerodynamic, huh? To put it in perspective, the Ferrari 599 has a drag coeffiecient of 0.33 - and it too is considered rather slippery.

There's not much to say for the prius in terms of design - they've kept the basic shape, which I've never liked, they've given it a face similar to the Corolla, which I've never liked, and they've kept the retarded split rear window thing, which you guessed it, I've never liked. Toyota have been saying that for this new model, they rejected the futuristic ideas of the current model and went with a more conventional, user-friendly design - but this new interior doesn't look very useer-friendly at all, so I hope they're right.

In the end, I still believe that the Prius is an irrelevant car - why did the current model have to cost $40,000 and still only be equipped with two airbags? - and it remains to be seen whether the new model will adress this. But first impressions have me betting that it won't.

DETROIT MOTOR SHOW 2009: The Next-Gen Toyota Prius for Next-Gen Greenies

I suppose I wanted to bring this story to you a while ago, but really, I wanted to be well-informed before I made a decision to love or loathe the Chevrolet Volt. I wanted to be knowledgeable of all that it can and can't do, so I could bring you an informative article. For a change.

This is an important car. And as soon as a carmaker claims that their latest car is "theoretically emissionless" and not only that, will be going to production as shown, you can't help but raise an eyebrow. Is it General Motors spin? I'm pleased to say that it probably isn't.

At first, the Volt seems close to normal. It is based on the next-generation Astra platform, is front drive, front engined... yet nothing is as it seems. I'll start with what I know best - aesthetics. At first I thought it looked funny, like a joke - I mean, why are the windows indented into the shape of the body. Why does it seem to look like it tried to look normal, but couldn't? Because this car has an electric motor, and for it to be effective the Volt needs to be as aerodynamic as humanly possible. Aerodynamics govern the way the Volt looks. Given that GM had to achieve such a feat in aerodynamics, the Volt doesn't look half bad. A bit gawkily futuristic, but hey, it's a brave new world out there.

But what was that I just said? The Volt has an electric motor? Yes, it does. It is the principle motor of the car, and is what drives the front wheels. The Volt also has a not-so-futuristic petrol engine, but GM says that it really doesn't even need to be there, in most consumer's cases. Did you think it was a petrol-electric hybrid like the Toyota Prius? Think again. At the helm is the 112kW electric engine (with an instantaneous 370Nm of torque), which is connected to a high-tech lithium-ion battery. Even Toyota, with it's next-generation Toyota Prius, hasn't fully developed the lithium-ion technology for everyday use. So far, so good. The battery will power the Volt for 65km, but then has to be plugged in to a mains power supply to recharge the battery overnight. 65km may not sound like much, but GM has somehow researched the subject and found that it is enough for approximately 75% of private american drivers. That figure could be a crock, but it sounds about right to me.

So what about the other 25%? Sometimes we need to travel more than 65km, and although the Volt is emissionless when it runs on electric power, what do you do then? This is where the petrol engine comes into the equation. Only one the battery has no power left does it start up, and even then, it does not actually directly power the wheels of the car. Instead, the 55kW generated by the 1.4 litre engine is used to power the electric engine until you can find mains power supply. Even in this situation however, the Volt uses only 4.7 litres/100km. About the same as the current Prius, then.

Other upsides to this car are numerous. A full 65km charge in mains power will cost only roughly $1.20. If you're commuting around town in your little Yaris-sized small car, doing 7.6/100km, you will save 1520 litres of fuel a year, which, even at the currently lower-than-usual prices, would be $1672 a year. Or about 5.9 tonnes of greenhouse gas. Impressive. But then I thought about the greenhouse effect a little more, and wondered: if the Volt charges from mains power, and mains power isn't green power (like Australia, where Coal power stations are the most common) - is the Volt really a green car? There are people on both sides of the fence, some arguing that the Volt would still create less CO2 that the average car, some arguing that it would produce more.

But I decided that this is irrelevant. The Chevrolet Volt present a way that everyone with a car can be carbon-negligible, and if governments were truly serious about making that a reality, they would continue the process that creates a green power grid with more renewable energy sources. With everyone driving Chevrolet Volts, the fault rests on the government if we are still producing heaps of CO2. Sort of like "well, we all went out and bought Chevy Volts so we could all go green, now it's your turn". Yeah, that's about right.

Downsides? It weighs 1750kg, so don't expect blistering performance, even if all that torque is available as soon as the tacho needle leaves 0 rpm. Will it be expensive? Only time will tell, but expect GM to make it as competitive as it possibly can. Why? Because GM is failing - without properly good sales, it will go bankrupt, just like everything else at the moment. It can see that the Volt could be a world-changing (but more importantly for them, profit-changing) car, provided people buy them buy the bucketload. And encouraging that will most definitely mean a price incentive.

In my belief, a car like the Chevrolet Volt should be partially subsidised by the american government, so that it reaches as many people as possible, and prevents climate change as much as it possibly can. If everyone in America (300 million) saved 5.9 tonnes a year like the Yaris driver (and most will save more), you're looking at nearly 2 billion tonnes of CO2 that the human race hasn't emitted. It's becoming more and more important, even for the future of the human race, that this car sells. And sells phenomenally. Because there just isn't a car anywhere in the world that makes negating carbon emissions so accessible and possible.

So when can we all buy one? In America, it will go on sale in late 2010 (if everything goes as planned), and elsewhere in the years following that. Expect it to arrive here at the earliest in 2012. It can't come soon enough.

I've given the US of A a bit of a sledging lately - but this is their chance to prove my sentiments unfounded. I want a Chevrolet Volt. I want an American Car. I never thought I'd say that, but I want an American Car. It is desirable.

NEWS: Chevrolet Volt to Save the Planet