Toyota To Redesign Prius With Solar Panels

Toyota Prius plans to launch the new hybrid third version in 2010 which would use solar energy to run the air conditioning system of the car.

Early next year would witness an overall makeover of the popular Prius hybrid including a rooftop fitted with the solar panels as a part of makeover.

As per the reports from Reuters and Japanese business news service Nikkeione, the most unique feature of the third generation Prius would be its modified rooftop.

If the plans turn out to be successful, Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. would become the first ever auto manufacturer to use solar panels in a mass-produced car and would be able to give an aggressive competition to the General Motors for the label of the “world's top automaker.”

The solar panels would be installed on the roof of high-end Prius hybrid models only.

However, the small solar panels would not be able to generate too much power, panels would provide partial power to the car’s air conditioning system.

Solar panels developed by Kyocera Corp. would be employed for this purpose. But the news has not been confirmed yet by the spokeswoman of Toyota.

Third-generation Toyota Prius is expected to send chills through the automobile market in the same way introductory Prius hit the market of Japan (in late 1997) and worldwide (in 2000) with the total sales of the world's first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid car reaching up to 1 million units worldwide.

Prius was improvised in 2003 and now the third version is at hand. Everyone is looking forward to see how the new hybrid system would function.

Toyota plans to produce at least 450,000 Priuses by 2009 and invent a hybrid version of every model by 2020.

However,Toyota refrained from giving any comment on their project planning strategy.

The details of the new version of Prius would be revealed next May, a company source told the Associated Press.

Though, the utilization of solar energy by solar panel technique has no benefit for the environment but generally when AC is activated in a vehicle there is a remarkable descend in the fuel-efficiency and at present the rate of gas is $4-per gallon in the US, so any technology which saves the fuel of the vehicle can be really advantageous for the car owner.

The hefty fuel price is also one factor which is contributing to an increasing interest of people and consequent high sale of hybrid cars.

Companies like Nissan, Honda, and Ford are also planning to follow suit.