Toyota plans solar-powered air conditioning in Prius hybrid
Filed under: Autos | By: Daniel
Posted on: July 7, 2008 | 2 Comments
Back in May we reported that the Toyota Prius Hybrid had achieved over one million car sales, this was great news for global warming and today we have heard some more news about Toyota’s efforts in this area.
Toyota are planning to put solar-powered air conditioning in high-end Prius hybrid models, this new feature will show that the Prius is a car that wants to be good for the environment.
The third-generation Toyota Prius will launch in 2009 and Kyocera solar panels will be used to generate between two and five kilowatts of electricity.
While Toyota has not commented officially on this news, it is believed to be a solid rumor.
With oil prices rising we will all have to look towards cars that use less oil and give more kilometers per gallon, this is one reason why the sales of Prius have been increasing.
How have oil prices affected you and will you be looking towards hybrid cars in the near future?
Source: Read
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considering the miles per gallon of this car are just as high as most other cars in it’s class, what’s the point? the figures that toyota claim are unachievable. the only time this car is more efficient is in a traffic jam and anyone can turn their engine off then to save fuel.
I would think that having the Prius charge while it is parked is a great idea, esp. for small cities where you don’t have to drive very far for most trips. In that case, you’d be using mostly solar power (imagine the power collected for 8 hours of parking in the sun!).
However, I would question the amount of power collected by the solar array - 2kW to 5kW is fairly high and for the surface area available, I’d argue that this is impossible since real solar cars with 9 square meters of solar panels is around 2kW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuna_3). These solar cars are 16 feet long x 6 feet wide and has significantly more area than the top of a Prius