For one of the most unusual cars on the road, Honda's Civic Hybrid is remarkably unremarkable.

If you are a hair-shirt-wearing eco-warrior, who wants to save the planet and let everyone know it, then you will probably hate this car, because it hides its green credentials beautifully.

Unlike other 'green' vehicles, the Civic Hybrid looks for all the world like any other strikingly designed, sleek five-seater saloon. It also drives, sounds and behaves just like any other petrol-engined car.

It uses a system called Integrated Motor Assist, which was first developed almost a decade ago and launched in the Honda Insight. Unlike the Civic, the Insight was a true stop-and-stare vehicle - the one I drove was a long, lean green impractical lozenge of a machine - with two seats, a boot packed with batteries and the ability to cover 80 miles per gallon.

The new Civic is altogether more businesslike. Lower, longer and wider than the previous Civic IMA, its 115 horsepower, 1.4-litre engine produces more power than a typical 1.6-litre engine, but only uses the same amount of fuel as a 1.1-litre car.

The integrated electric motor assists the engine by giving it a boost during acceleration to improve fuel economy. It also runs the car at idle to reduce emissions, so when you stop in traffic the engine switches off. Not only that, the battery that powers the electric motor charges itself up with energy from deceleration and braking.

For the technically curious, Honda has provided a couple of digital bar charts that bounce up and down in the instrument panel to let you know the state of the battery, but the real beauty of all this technology is that when you are behind the wheel you don't know, or need to know, about the complexity of the operations under the bonnet.

For driver and passengers, the ride is smooth, the car handles well, the instrumentation glows with the cool blue of the more radically-styled five-door Civic and the air-conditioned cabin is simply a nice place to be.

Another nice touch comes courtesy of the engine's low emissions, which give the car 100 per cent discount from the London Congestion Charge.

Honda has already sold more than 130,000 hybrid vehicles worldwide. In Europe, it has sold more than 2,000 hybrid vehicles - most of those in the UK.

Honda believes the future lies in alternative energy vehicles, like the FCX, which runs on hydrogen and produces zero NOX or CO2. Prototype models are already on the road in America and Japan, but a mass-production Honda fuel cell car is still some way off.

Auto facts Honda Civic Hybrid ES

  • Price: £17,100
  • Ins group: Seven
  • Fuel consumption (Combined): 61.4mpg
  • Top speed: 115mph
  • Length: 454.5cm/179in
  • Width: 175cm/68.9in
  • Luggage capacity: 12.3 cu ft
  • Fuel tank capacity: 11 gallons/50 litres
  • CO2 emissions: 109g/km
  • Warranty: 3 years/90,000 miles