In March, Honda unveiled the Small Hybrid Sports concept (above). The big deal with this car is that it would be offered only as a hybrid - every time you see one on the road, you know it's a hybrid car. This is the same realization you get when you see a Prius driving by. There is no diesel or non-hybrid version of the Prius, and this instant identification has helped Toyota sell bunches of the popular car. In a new article about the show-off factor of hybrids, Newsweek calls this "Prius envy." As one person interviewed for the article says, "If I'm driving a hybrid, I want people to know it."

Toyota obviously has a huge lead in this fight, but Honda is working hard on a comeback, Newsweek says (and we've been reporting here for a while), and other automakers are gearing up, too. Toyota, for its part, wants to move the Prius brand even further forward, creating an entire line-up of Prius-badged vehicles.

[Source: Keith Naughton / Newsweek, thanks to Dan K.]

If pictures and words don't make you feel as viscerally there as video, Honda's got you covered from the Geneva Motor Show. Yesterday, they put up three vids of the Small Hybrid Sports concept (50 seconds), the booth experience in general (90 seconds) and the earth-image F1 car (40 seconds). There are exactly zero bits of spoken words in the videos; they're more like quick music videos. For details on these cars, click on the related stories below:

• Geneva Motor Show: Honda Small Hybrid Sports Concept revealed
• Honda F1 confirms plan to promote environmental awareness with 2007 livery

[Source: Honda]