Hybrid drama

Some love them as the luxurious and practical approach to private transportation. Others loathe them as dangerous, polluting roadhogs. Nobody would call them economical. But from next month arguments over the merits or evils of the sports-utility vehicle, or SUV, will get more complicated as the latest new model hits the streets on 15 June.

Toyota calls its luxury new Lexus RX400h ‘a moving contradiction, an SUV with full-time four-wheel drive that performs like a big-engined brute, yet sips petrol like a family saloon’.

The advertisements promise luxury, fuel economy and low emissions, ‘a vehicle that offers you the best of both worlds, without asking you to sacrifice anything. A V6 engine delivers the power of a V8 while producing only a fraction of the emissions associated with a standard SUV.’

It sounds too good to be true. But the performance figures speak clearly: 34.9mpg and 192g/km CO2 emissions from a 3.3-litre V6. This compares to 23.2mpg and 288g/km CO2 from the 3-litre V6-powered RX300, which is otherwise nearly identical (a 3.2-litre V6 Vauxhall Frontera gets less than 20mpg and puts out CO2 at the rate of 344g/km).