Toyota plans Prius with solar panels

Toyota plans to install solar panels on the roof of the next generation of Prius hybrid cars, according to a report in Monday's edition of the Nikkei newspaper.

The panels, which are expected to begin appearing on the high-end version of the gasoline-electric hybrid car as early as next spring, will supply part of the 2 to 5 kilowatts needed to power the air conditioning, MarketWatch cited the Japanese business daily as reporting. Kyocera will reportedly supply the panels.

The move would make Toyota the first major automaker to incorporate a solar-power generation system into a mass-produced car.

Prius was introduced in 1997 and has since sold more than 1 million vehicles worldwide. The car was redesigned in 2003, and a third generation has been widely expected to appear soon.

[gerrrg]

Now how about some electrochromatic glass so that the car stays cool in the middle of summer, allowing me to keep my dog in the car with the window closed?

[Ramon366]

Great idea; Zapcars have this feature as an option.

Anyone inconsiderate enough to leave a dog, unattended in a car deserves jail time.

[mehtars]

Audi has had a solar panel on their high end A8 models for a while, as an option.

http://www.audiusa.com/audi/us/en2/new_cars/Audi_A8/S8/Features/options.html

Though this keeps the blower running so the car doesn't get too hot.

[Defrauder]

Total marketing gimmick. 2 to 5 Kwatts is a lot of power and solar panels on the roof could at most provide 200 watts. With dust and other stuff that seems to get all over my car and the sun never being truely overhead, you'd never get close to that amount. 200 watts is enough to run a fan, yes, but a compressor? Never. The amount f energy used to make the panel is far more than it would likely ever functionally produce. A+ for good marketing if it gets people to buy the car though.

[johnchen168]

Does Toyota use the latest technology so that they can achieve 2Kwatts of power?

[jayperk]

I estimate maybe 150 watts max in full overhead sun. Not much of a contribution to the air conditioning. of 2,000 to 5,000 watts. How much is that worth?

[Dango517]

Yep, good idea, especially for those that park there cars in open parking lots during the day. Snow might be a problem in some areas thou. If it works maybe a heater could be added to melt the snow. If enough power is generated maybe it could preheat the inside of the car. :) Now that's a great idea! If it works I hope they make retro fits for current cars. :D A nice warm car to get into on a cold day would be really great! They would sell millions of them.

[Toneast]

Way to go Toyota, the butt kicking champ!
It's time to butt kick GM, Ford, and the likes.
They deserve it. They've been slaving for the oil interest too long.
Let's push them toward bankrupcy! We need a new type of car company in this country, one that works to promote oil-independent technologies, one that works in the interest of the consuming public instead of for the interest of few oil slickies in Texas!

[gerrrg]

electrochromatic windows to prevent UV-wavelength light from warming the car up.

[CNET editors' note: personal attack deleted].

[NW_Guy]

I got a good chuckle reading the comment about pre-warming the car or melting snow off using solar power.

These comments highlight a huge gap in folks understanding of solar power... yes, the panels produce DC electricity, but 60-150 watts is about all that can be expected based on current technology. This much wattage is not really enough to electrically warm air or surfaces by very much. As the article itself states, this is less than 10% of the additional energy consumed by a Air Conditioning compressor over a car without AC (2-5,000 watts).

In other words, the solar panels are a neat gimmick in this green-hungry market (good move, Toyota). However, it seems to me they ought to be put to use for more mundane but useful tasks like trickle-charging the battery while parked instead of enabling AC option. Maybe this is another task the panel will perform?

[b_baggins]

You sit and chuckle at folks about using solar power to electrically heat a car, and then go on to seriously propose that 150 watts can realistically trickle charge a 100 kilowatt battery pack?

Physician, heal thyself.

[ralfthedog]

How about solar panels to recharge your battery if it is going dead?

[Mannerheim1540]

If the solar panels are charging the batteries during my hour total commute, eight hours on the job and one hour for lunch, and we assume the best case 200 watts, doesn't that put 2kw into the battery system for use during the one hour of commute?

[b_baggins]

Except that an automobile requires 100 kilowatts to accelerate and about 30 kilowatts to cruise. So your 2 kilowatts would last approximately 1/15th of an hour. Or about 4 minutes.

[morrie 52]

On a recent BBC Top Gear ,Jeremy Clarckson said that the way the battery parts where resourced from around the world that the Prius was one of the most polluting to build,and in a test with an AMG BMW on a race track with the Prius going flat out with the BMW following the Prius did 17 mpg and the Beemer 19 mpg so horses for coursers.

[ferretboy88]

Put solar panels on 18 wheel trucks. I'm sure that will keep the world running.

[Olu070]

How about a plug-in hybrid? In the states that produce cleaner electricity this is the way to go. Toyota better get in line with this or they may find themselves behind some of the younger companies going this route.

[Vegaman_Dan]

GM's Volt coming out in 2010 has this as the default method of charging the battery when not using the on board engine. GM doesn't do anything small, so this could really change things. With a 640 mile range and the first 40 on electric only, I could go to work and back every day without ever touching the gas tank. That alone would save me $100+ a week. With gas going up as fast as it is, that could potentially be even higher savings. No thanks, Toyota, I'll wait for the Volt- which is also just freakin' cool to look at too. THAT is a sporty looking car.

[ecyfoto]

"The move would make Toyota the first major automaker to incorporate a solar-power generation system into a mass-produced car."

I'm not so sure about that. Didn't Saab offer something similar years ago to power the venting of interior heat?

[livecrunch]

I own prius for couple of years now and will replace it with the new one. I just can't wait till 2009. I actually just wrote an article about it also I provided some reference pages. Thank you for this info!
http://www.livecrunch.com/2008/07/07/pimped-out-prius-with-solar-panels-by-toyota/

[mlinder69]

Not real useful what they dont tell you is that the solar panels will provide such little amount of power they are not worth the cost, hopefully it will stay an option, other wise I wont want one.

[mlinder69]

In terms that most people can understand... The solar panels on the car can NOT provide enough power to run even the smallest desktop PC. How usefull is it now?

[opennetworkers]

People here are talking about 150-200 Watts. The Nuna 4 solar car (true... it has a 4 square meter surface) generates 6Kw of energy through it's solar panels. Now let's say that the new Prius design (I saw a prototype-study which had a very long roof-panel) will be able to add 2 square meters of solar panels and that these are only half as efficient as the state of the art and expensive Nuna 4 solar challange car, that still will enable about 1500 Wattsa nd not 200 Watts as suggested here. If you leave that out in the sun all day...who knows, it might give you another 10 miles per day, especially because the new Prius body seems to become extreme lightweight (there is talk about 410 kg. = 900 pounds). That probably is without batteries, but that leaves a few hundred pounds to add for batteries and it will still be lighter than todays Prius..

[texaslabrat]

Interesting line of thought...unfortunately it is based on incorrect data. There is no possible way a 4 square meter panel is generating 6kW of power without a very large concentrator involved (which would take significantly more surface area). The average solar irradiation at the earth's surface is on the order of 1 kW/m^2. So, even if that panel was 100% efficient, the maximum it could produce would be 4kW (again, unconcentrated, as would be the case of a non-tracked fixed panel). The world record for photovoltaic efficiency is still under 50% last I checked. Typical peak efficiency for commodity-level cells is around 20%, and less for non-tracking panels (peak efficiency times cosine of angle as measured from perpendicular to the panel) that would be the norm for vehicle-mounted setups. 200W sounds about right...could be a bit more depending on design and type of cells used, but not on the order of 1.5kW as you've suggested...there just isn't enough surface area to work with, and mechanized tracking with a concentrator just isn't practical on a motor vehicle of the Prius's size.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Keep in the mind the cost of solar cells, especially the ones you are referring to. If Toyota includes those on the new Prius, they will need to increase the price of the car by $5K or more. That's not much of a savings.

[b_baggins]

Wow. That's a neat trick, considering that the maximum amount of energy in incident sunlight falling on the planet is a kilowatt per square meter.

[lyntone]

Chrysler, GM and Ford better pay attention, they are going the way of the dinosaurs and the dodo birds!

[Vegaman_Dan]

Chrysler, GM, and Ford already have hybrids out, including in full size pickups and SUV's, something that Toyota has no plans to do currently. I don't think it's the automakers that need to wake up as much as it is the oil companies. :)