Commentary

Solar-Powered Toyota Prius Coming?

Reports are burning up the enviroblogs that the 2010 Toyota Prius will boast optional solar panels on the roof. A solar array on a Prius would be like those flower vases in VW Bugs: cute design feature, but not a feat of engineering.

Reports are burning up the enviroblogs that the 2010 Toyota Prius will boast optional solar panels on the roof. A solar array on a Prius would be like those flower vases in VW Bugs: cute design feature, but not a feat of engineering.There is some speculation that power generated by the roof panels could boost the car's electric motor, but that is unlikely. The solar panels won't be powerful enough to help the car's engine, but they could be used to run the air conditioner, radio, or fans.

An array of solar panels, reportedly supplied by Kyocera, would be embedded in the roof of the 2010 Prius, according to the Japanese business paper, Nikkei. How many? And how much juice would they generate? The numbers may have been scrambled in translation.


More Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

"Some of the details seem implausible. Nikkei wrote that the panels would produce 2 to 5 kilowatts of electricity, roughly the same as a rooftop solar array on a typical house," writes SFGate.

I'm not knocking Toyota. The Prius is a decent ride and Toyota deserves kudos for having the foresight to time the hybrid market as well as it did. But the solar panel option has to be seen for what it is -- a neat marketing trick.

The bottom line is that a few solar panels on the Prius won't appreciably improve MPGs, but they could generate more discussion about the capabilities -- and limitations -- of solar power, and bust a few misconceptions in the process. That's a good thing.

Whether the solar buggies will ever roll off the assembly lines at all, and whether they would be shipped to the United States or stay in Japan remains to be seen. There's no official word from Toyota.


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links