Prius Solar Roof Panel; All Air and No Charge

[AMERICA 123]

OMG, an historic first.

Something connected to MIT is mildly negative concerning Toyota as opposed to an advertorial bordering on propaganda.

Of course, they didn't write themselves - no surprise -.

Toyota's Underwhelming Solar Prius

The optional solar roof on Toyota's 2010 Prius may not provide a < single > watt of mobility.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

By Peter Fairley

A solar roof will simply ventilate the 2010 Prius.

The solar roof that Toyota is offering as an option on its next-generation Prius hybrid sedan may be even less useful than expected, according to a report in the specialty publication EVWorld.

The solar panels, reports EVWorld, will add not a microwatt of charge to drive the Prius.

Last summer, Technology Review looked at the potential impact of adding a solar roof to the Prius when rumors of Toyota's plans first emerged.

The clear conclusion of the experts was this: keep solar panels on rooftops, where they can be tilted toward the sun for maximum efficiency.

A solar rooftop would be just a "marketing gimmick," said Andrew Frank, a plug-in hybrid pioneer at the University of California, Davis, and chief technology officer for UC-Davis hybrid-vehicle spinoff Efficient Drivetrains.

Toyota, it turns out, won't even bother plugging its solar rooftop panel into the 2010 Prius's nickel-metal-hydride battery.

EVWorld editor Bill Moore, citing a conversation with Akihiko Otsuka, chief engineer for the Prius redesign, writes that

Toyota tried it and apparently discovered that for not-entirely-well-understood reasons, connecting the PV panels to the battery turns them into an "antenna" of sorts, which at the very least seems to disrupt the car's radio. < Yea, that EMF radiation can be a b**t*h to deal with, huh ? >

So Toyota left it at that.

The solar roof will simply help keep the car cool when it's parked by running a fan to ventilate the car.

For the average driver, that could be somewhat useful for, say, half the year.

I spoke with Otsuka while reporting from the Geneva Motor Show earlier this month, and learned that Toyota engineers are targeting a range of 20 kilometers in the EV mode for the plug-in version of the Prius.

The lithium-battery-equipped vehicle is to be offered to < a microscopic number of - > Toyota's fleet customers by the end of this year.

That would mark a boost over the 10-to-15-kilometer range offered by the nickel-metal-hydride-powered plug-in Prius that Toyota has been testing.

But it remains just a third of the 60-kilometer range that GM is promising for its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, which is due out next year. GM's design has already set off a debate over the cost effectiveness and efficiency of carrying the battery capacity that such range requires.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/23179/

I'll tell you what's really gettin' ventilated here - somebodies wallet.

[t-rex]

The 1990s Mazda 929 had a solar-powered ventilation system that kept the interior from getting ridiculously hot, by activating fans and automatically cracking the sunroof to allow the heat to escape. This is hardly something new.