Geneva 2010: the wrap-up

The Geneva motor show may be based in the heart of peace-loving Switzerland, but this year more than ever before the battle lines were truly drawn.

There were several issues at play, if you could see the press conferences through the plastic trees.

Volkswagen, Europe's biggest car maker and the world number two, declared war on Toyota, the world number one.

And VW didn't just make an overall sales challenge (to be world leader by 2018), it wanted to wrestle the hybrid and electric mantle from Toyota.

In very clear terms VW boss Professor Dr Martin Winterkorn said: "The Volkswagen Group... is moving with electric cars and hybrids into the fast lane. In the future, the heart of the Volkswagen Group will also beat electrically."

Them there's some fightin' words.

The Japanese giant Toyota already has a healthy head start, with almost 2 million hybrids sold over the past 12 years.

But what was more surprising was that VW was even entertaining the thought of being a player in hybrid and electric cars, let alone a leader.

As recently as late last year, at the Frankfurt motor show, I asked the head of Volkswagen's extensive powertrain division which was better: diesel or hybrid power?

The context was that Toyota believes hybrid and electric cars are the way to go because new, more stringent emissions regulations would make the clean-technology in diesel cars so expensive in the near future that the car makers may as well go and build a hybrid.

In Frankfurt, the VW powertrain chief was almost dismissive of hybrid power, and said that VW still had a long way to go with the development of internal combustion engines -- petrol or diesel.

That may still be the case of course, and VW made it very clear it was not going to surrender internal combustion for hybrid or electric cars, but clearly something has happened in the past six months for VW to make such a sudden and public turnaround.

Prof Winterkorn made some bold claims and outlined the company's hybrid and electric vision for the coming years.

VW's ambition should be applauded, but I can't help but wonder what Toyota thinks of all this. After all, it is already on its third generation hybrid system before VW has released its first.

Furthermore, Toyota also has millions and millions of kilometres of real world data to draw from.

It will be a great battle to watch from the sidelines.

The other battle (apart from the green debate) is safety. Now that almost every new car has a five-star NCAP safety rating, car makers are now trying to find new ways to avoid needing all that good crash-protection stuff in the first place.

In particular, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz talked about pedestrian-avoidance systems.

The Volvo automatically hits the brakes if its spots a pedestrian in your path, but Mercedes is looking to take this a step further and is considering making the car swerve around the errant pedestrian automatically. Here's hoping it's not into an oncoming car (we're assured that's not the case).

General Motors' Bob Lutz was in fine form at Geneva. It's one of the rare occasions we get to see the product guru speak in other languages.

He was being interviewed by German TV at one point, before he was dragged across by his minders to another TV crew for a live cross with the BBC.

GM had just announced a recall in the US for 1.7 million vehicles -- but it was because of a part made by a company part-owned by Toyota. GM didn't miss the opportunity to rub Toyota's nose in it.

After all that, Lutz was probably hoping that a couple of pesky Australian journalists didn't speak his language when they bailed him up after the media scrum to unveil what Australians know as the new Barina (already shown at Detroit).

When your correspondent asked about how the Camaro was travelling, Lutz sighed and tilted his head back. After saying it wasn't looking good and that it had been postponed indefinitely, he joked that he always got in trouble talking to Australian journalists. Here's hoping he doesn't get in trouble for saying that.

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