It was just one in a series of one-upmanships declared by the two rivals at the Detroit auto show.

GM's shot across the bow came a day after Toyota announced plans to deliver a small fleet of plug-in hybrids to commercial customers by 2010 but did not reveal when they would be available to the general public.

GM, which was late in introducing gas-electric hybrids, also plans to launch a car that can run exclusively on electric battery power, the Chevy Volt, by 2010.

It is also making a major incursion into flex-fuel vehicles, having announced plans Sunday to produce biofuel out of garbage at a cost of less than a dollar a gallon in a venture with Illinois-based Coskata Inc.

GM is currently producing more than a million flex-fuel vehicles a year globally and is committed to making half its production flex-fuel by 2012.

"If you look across the range of technologies our position is very competitive," GM chief executive officer Rick Wagoner told reporters Monday.

"In some areas like biofuels we're clearly the global leaders and we're moving very aggressively in fuel cells," he said, explaining that GM will soon have the largest fleet of fuel-cells being tested on roadways.

But Toyota gave notice that it will be introducing flex-fuel vehicles in the US market next year and detailed its plans to develop cleaner and more efficient methods of producing ethanol from wood-waste rather than food crops.

Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe also praised new rules requiring automakers to ensure that the vehicles they sell in the United States have an average fuel economy of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

GM, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC -- whose fleets are much more weighted towards gasoline-guzzling trucks and sports utility vehicles -- lobbied heavily against the new rules.

They warned that meeting them will require major research and development investments and possibly the elimination of popular models.

"Toyota strongly supports this long overdue legislation," Watanabe said Sunday.

"We will not wait until the deadline to comply. I have issued a challenge to our engineers to meet the new standards well in advance of 2020. I believe it can be done, it should be done and that Toyota is capable of doing it."

GM's Wagoner also refused to concede second place to Toyota in overall global sales.

"I suspect it's going to be pretty close, if anything it's going to be remarkable that two companies that sell that many units are that close," he told reporters.

"If we win that's great, and I'm sure we'll be hustling as hard as we can to stay number one. If we don't we'll come back the next day to try to capture the title."

GM and Toyota were not the only automakers to make big promises when it came to environmentally-friendly vehicles.

Ford president Bill Ford announced "a global commitment" to become "leader in sustainability" which includes plans to sell 500,000 vehicles under its Ecoboost brand in the next five years.

Honda Motor unveiled a fuel-cell powered sedan which will be leased to a limited number of customers in California later this year. It also vowed to have hybrids account for 10 percent of global sales by 2010 and to bring clean diesels to the US by 2009.

Chinese automakers also presented their hybrid offers, although no date was set for entry into the United States.

And the "green" fashion even reached luxury cars, with Ferrari presenting for the first time the F430 Spider, a prototype car that works on biofuel.

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