Not everybody subscribes unquestioningly to the Toyota message that Prius is saving the world. Since its launch in 1997 it has now passed the one million sales mark and, if only on the basis that you say it often enough it must be true, Prius is with us to stay.

But Toyota is on a new crusade − to sell a million hybrid vehicles a year by the early 2010s. Many of them will be sold in the U.S. as Toyota talks about Europe contributing just 100,000 of those annual sales.

Their next step, previewed here, is the plug-in hybrid – designed to plug into the domestic supply when it needs a recharge. And they’ve been trialing it in Europe since last year, starting in France in partnership with the national electricity supplier EDF. And last month they brought the UK into the scheme, again in collaboration with EDF.

But not wishing to turn their backs completely on conventional powertrains, they introduced Toyota Optimal Drive – a concept based on increased efficiency for both engines and transmissions. Toyota claim this enhances performance while driving down CO2 emissions (and fuel consumption), on vehicles right across the range. And they say Toyota Optimal Drive will be available on every one of the 13 all-new or significantly revised models they plan to roll out over the next 12 months. And the environmental message, obviously, was prominent on all three of Toyota’s Paris world premières.

The first is the production-ready version of the impressive little iQ. This genuinely small car shows a lot of what a small car should be other than just small – with really clever packaging allowing amazing space in a car you could put in a suitcase. They also describe iQ as ‘ultra-safe’, with nine airbags including the world’s first rear window curtain shield airbag; and it has ABS, VSC stability control and Traction Control as standard. You’d wonder where they put it all. The 1.0-litre VVT-i gasoline version dips under the 100 g/km CO2 barrier, too, at 99 g/km, and the 1.4 D-4D diesel version makes only 103 g. It looks great, too.

Then there’s the Urban Cruiser, ‘another solution to urban mobility’, or, in another description, “a new kind of stylish, urban-proof all-roader”. This one looks pretty cute, too.

So does the third generation Avensis sedan, but you’d have to worry about how deeply it’s intruding into small Lexus territory, as a very close cousin to the compact IS. It has Toyota Optimal Drive technology, of course, and they say CO2 emissions have been reduced by up to 26 per cent. Right on message for Paris 2008.