The arrival of 60 Toyota Auris Hybrid hatchbacks has enabled York’s largest car hire specialist to offer its customers an ultra-low-emissions option for the first time.

Autohorn Fleet Services has been in business as a car and van rental, short-term leasing and contract hire for more than 15 years, and holds National, Alamo and Europcar franchises, with 70% of its business, around 200,000 days of hire a year, in the corporate sector.

The company operates a mixed fleet of 600 vehicles, but had only ever used a small number of Toyotas in the past. Now not only have the Auris Hybrids joined the fleet, but Autohorn has also ordered 50 Toyota Aygo ICE 1.0-litre hatchbacks as city runabouts.

The Auris Hybrid five-door, five-seat 1.8 VVT-i hatchback has CO2 emissions of 93g/km and the combined-circuit fuel-consumption figure is more than 70mpg.

“Ordering the hybrids was very much a conscious decision to enable us to offer our customers a genuinely environmentally-friendly vehicle, either for short or longer-term hire,” said Autohorn’s head of sales Neil O'Connor.

“We’re really excited to be able to go back to those customers and say that we now have super low emission cars that we can supply.”