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The Toyota Prius made its debut at the Tokyo Motor Show a decade ago, and how the world has changed since.

Government regulators and consumers alike are pushing auto makers to hurry to market with fuel-efficient gasoline and diesel cars, hybrids, plug-in hybrids and eventually - perhaps - even hydrogen fuel-cell cars.

Clearly for the auto industry, the "green" debate is over. Regardless of one's position on climate change and man-made CO{-2} gases, the world's auto makers are proceeding with products that are fuel-efficient and put out little or no exhaust emissions.

But give Toyota credit for being first with the biggest hybrid push. A decade after the first Prius, Toyota has sold more than one million hybrids.

But walking the halls of the Tokyo show made it clear that not everyone agrees that hybrids are the answer or even desirable. The German makers are heavily invested in diesel technology that provides an immediate increase in fuel economy when compared with conventional gasoline engines and with special treatments deliver clean tailpipe emissions.

Still, in a game of one-upmanship, Honda showed a clean diesel technology that officials say is more advanced than anything the Germans have to offer. It will go on sale in 2009 in North America.

But a Honda diesel? There's more. Gasoline, diesel, ethanol, hydrogen, electricity - name a source of power and development is going on in Japan. And the work is going on in earnest.

Nissan Motor Co., under its Green 2010 plan, says it is accelerating efforts to develop a zero-emission electric car for drivers in crowded urban areas. Honda Motor Co. CEO Takeo Fukui said he believes working on fuel-cell cars makes more sense than trying to refine pure electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids.

In the meantime, the internal combustion engine is not going away. So it was no surprise to see fuel economy emerge as one of the dominant themes at the show. Auto makers have been refining conventional internal combustion engines to cut fuel consumption, and they have developed filters and other features to make fuel-efficient diesels cleaner, too.

"There's no doubt that some people feel some guilt about driving a car, and that's going to increase," Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn told reporters.

But what about a guilt-free clean car? To that end, Daimler said it expects to start leasing a fuel-cell B-Class car in 2010. Honda is planning a commercial launch next year for its hydrogen-powered FCX fuel-cell car in Japan and the United States. Honda said it would unveil the fuel-cell car next month at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

Moreover, Honda also plans to launch a dedicated hybrid car next year with annual sales planned for 200,000. Here is a real teaser: The CR-Z sports hybrid concept being shown at Tokyo is, say Honda officials, the inspiration for a production car that will at least initially be offered only as a hybrid.

Toyota, for its part, is considering adding new versions of its Prius gas-electric hybrid sedan, effectively creating a family of hybrid cars, according to reports. Toyota is also considering additional hybrid models, perhaps a hybrid minivan among them. Toyota has a goal of selling as many as a million gas-electric hybrid vehicles a year by early in the next decade, so a minivan might make sense.

In the long term - say by the middle of this century - drivers are likely to have a wide range of environmentally friendly alternatives from which to choose.

For instance, Nissan has said that by 2010 it expects roughly one-third of its overall sales to be electric and fuel-cell cars, another third to be hybrid cars and the remaining third to be combustion-engine-powered cars. The goal is to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from new cars by 70 per cent from 2000 levels.

Judging from what is on display in Tokyo, "green" planning at Nissan and other major auto makers is well under way.

jcato@globeandmail.com