Toyota Goes Solar With 2010 Prius
Toyota has plans for the 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid. They are taking the technology used for cars one step further and bringing the green name to the forefront by adding solar panels to the roof of the car.
The point of this is to increase the car’s electric motor - but whether or not this will actually work is something that many people are speculating about. We couldn’t see it being enough power to operate the car’s engine - but maybe the radio or air conditioning.
Toyota has employed Kyocera to create the solar panels for them and will be embedding them on the roof of the Prius for the 2010 model year. A Japanese business paper Nikkei gave their opinion on how much power the panels would have for the car.
“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.”
It will be interesting to see if this is true when they are released. We are not sure yet if the newly adorned Prius will make its way to the U.S. shores.