Toyota is definitely maybe developing solar-powered car
By Darren Murph 
posted Jan 2nd 2009 6:25AM
posted Jan 2nd 2009 6:25AM
Around half a year ago, we heard that Toyota was engineering a Prius that would get part of its energy from the sun; now, we're seeing an eerily similar story from Japan suggesting that the plan is still on. In a rather odd report, it's noted that the automaker is "secretly (oh, is it now?) developing a vehicle that will be powered solely by solar energy," though it's also working on a partially solar-powered whip that'll come out long before the pure solar alternative. Regrettably, details beyond that are few and far between, though the premise here is completely reasonable given the current economy and the desire for automobiles that run on anything other than petroleum. Guess we'll check back in six months for yet another elusive report on the so-called progress.
First
tw@
Definitely Maybe - my favorite oasis album
I live in Bahrain, and this is code concept for us as more than 95% of the year are sunny, and more than 12 hours of sun per day. but i don't think we will see this any time soon.
The same thought man. I live in UAE, so it is the same weather as in Bahrain all year long, even when it is winter and kind of cold right now, the sun is there all day long.
My first car will be a solar powered one, inshallah. :)
I wish I had sun 12/7 where I lived...
:_(
I live in reading, we have about an hour of sunlight a day.
I live on Engadget dawt com. I rarely read about Sun.
I Sun on rarely. I dawt Engadget about com live read.
Attention: All ghost riding of the whip now costs extra on cloudy days.
I simply cant wait for someone to add spinners lol jkjk but you no someone will
Wonder when a tax on sunlight appears. Think not so far in the future.
That will be a sad, sad day.
but a sunny one atleast...
Toyota could place a small solar panel on the Prius where the sunroof would be & you could be charging your batteries continously while driving reguardless of whether the car is charging through regenitive braking or not add that together with a plug in hybrid technology. Looks like the worlds No. 1 isn't sleeping... Considering that Panasonic supplys Toyota with batteries & they've just accquired Sanyo, who are leaders in solar technology :-?
Hey guys! - Lets all go down the town tonight in my new car! Oh no, wait...
From what I remember about the original article, the solar panel would be used to power a portion of the air conditioning/heating system.
"secretly (oh, is it now?)"
Ah, and what else do you know about it?
"Regrettably, details beyond that are few and far between"
Oh, are they now?
"though the premise here is completely reasonable" [...] "elusive report on the so-called progress"
So it's reasonable but you expect they are not making any progress; or maybe they are making progress, but as it is a secret you expect to know everything about it.
It's the 2nd and you're already bound to win the "worst post ever of 2009" prize. Well done.
Whatever.
Thank you, sir, for your useful and insightful response.
This will save no polar bears.
What will happen is that no-one will buy it because for this to overcome the obvious problems of not having power at night and being silly-slow, it will need one super battery and super efficiency. Both of these will cost too much money and they will release a car that works great, looks horrible but costs $2m.
A hybrid would be a good idea, but just for using the sun to top up the battery on a Prius.
what's the next step? some small wind turbines that can charge the car when it's parked?
Chevy and Ford come one get with the program
Chevy and Ford have no Money to do similar and they have no experience. The best for our environment is closed GM and Ford and let the market Toyota.
The upcoming Volt could very easily have a supplemental solar panel. Quantum, a major supplier to GM, owns a large chunk of Asola - a solar panel manufacturer.
Quantum also is a part owner of Fisker Automotive, which is why a solar panel roof is going to be an option on the Karma.
The reason Chevy and Ford (and GM) have no money, because they pay twice as much in salary, severence and retirement package to the production employee as Honda and Toyota. Thanks to the union
If only they know how to allocate the resources and actually put toward design, R&D and reliability, things wouldn't be as bad as today.
Tom, if that was true then why were Toyota production workers making more than union workers from the Big Three in recent years? You do know that Toyota offers comparable wages and benefits, just so their workers don't feel compelled to also unionize. The reason the US automakers are in trouble is because their design product and fuel economy are NOT competitive versus the foreign automakers, add the fact that they depended on high SUVs sales for their profit margin and you have a clear and concise reason for their current situation.
If anyone can do it, Toyota can. They don't seem to be taking oil company bribes like the big three US companies, who shall remain nameless. Oh yea, I said it !!! You know it's true.
Dude, their Tundra pickup trucks suck down just as much gas as a Ford F150. (Actually more gas when you compare the online specs.. not by much though.) So they must be getting their share of bribes too, eh?
Toyota is going to take huge market share away from the big 3. I think its great. If they make a better product then business should go to them, even if they are not an American company. Heck they create jobs here too !
According to The Nikkei, Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells equipped on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes. The automaker later hopes to develop a model totally powered by solar cells on the vehicle, the newspaper said without citing sources.
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Let's hope for some real breakthroughs in this area. Resorting to photographing Toyota's receptionists is OK when there's no product to show, I guess :p
Next update: "Seems like the developers of Toyota's solar-powered car died mysteriously from a plane crash. What terrible luck!"
A solar panel could provide some supplemental power, but can NEVER be the sole power for a car. A bicycle, maybe, but a car, never. Why can I say this with such certainty? Simple physics:
1. One square meter of sunlight contains about 1000 watts of power, which is a little over 1 horsepower (about 1.25 if memory serves, but don't quote me)
2. The best solar cells in use can achieve about 30-35% efficiency, but even if they could achieve 100%, 1000 watts per square meter of car surface is the max they could collect, ever. This isn't opinion, it is a fact of nature.
3. 1000 watts in a square meter is only available on a sunny day and only if the solar panel is perfectly perpendicular to the sun, so it would either need to rotate to keep facing the sun (which would hurt aerodynamics) or it would usually not be able to get 100% of the energy theoretically available.
4. If EVERYTHING was ideal, you could, at most, get about 15 square meters of panels on a car, and that is probably being generous, so the formula follows:
15 x 1000 = 15,000 watts
15,000 watts would only be when all panels faced the sun perpendicular, so let's say half can face the sun on average, which is again being generous. So, 15,000 / 2 = 7500 watts
7500 watts is approximately equal to 10 hp. Even the old VW Beatle had about 36 horsepower and it weighed a LOT less than any car carrying a lot of batteries would weigh.
And if you were even more realistic and said that newer solar cells might achieve 50% efficiency, then it would only be about 5 horsepower. My lawn mower has more power. ;-)
None of this is even factoring in the extreme cost of the technologies involved. Your typical "cheap" solar cell is only about 15% efficient. The REALLY REALLY expensive ones like they use on satellites are the 30% efficient ones.
This is a really good post, I was thinking the same. No way can the solar panel drive the whole car. As an emergency supplement - maybe, but not for a regular driving
On the other hand, you could combine solar panels with small wind turbines, and voila! You have a great car-based, perpetuum cell phone charger! :)))
Mr. Christian:
You are being quite generous in your estimates. I agree that 5 hp is optimistic.
But maybe the idea will be some cheesy marketing concept, like: we sell you a battery-powered car, with some token solar panels on it, and then sell you a big 'ol rack of panels to go on the roof of your house, or up your tree, and a cable to plug them into the car's charging port.
Then they could say "This car runs on sunlight! Yay!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Solar_Challenge
Look at the rule changes for 2007, and the winners section.
Ski,
I would appreciate it if you would clarify your point. In the absence of clarification I will try to guess at your point and respond. If I missed your point, please accept my apology in advance.
If you are saying that, since these cars can race at about 40 to 80 mph then it is realistic for regular cars to run solely off solar power, then here is my response:
These cars are not realistic or practical examples of passenger cars anymore than an experimental human-powered ultralight plane is. They require clear skies, exceptional road conditions, batteries charged in advance before the race, special exemptions in the laws/rules of the road, and the safety of any occupants would be greatly in jeopardy in the event of an accident. They also can strand you in certain, highly likely and typical situations that are daily encountered and overcome by internal combustion and hybrid vehicles. Their carrying capacity is severely limited. The cost to build these cars is also enormous.
It is true that technology continuously advances, but there are limits imposed by nature, that in most cases we either will never achieve, or are not likely to achieve, like approaching light speed. However, in the case of solar power, my argument above, giving specific information about the amount of energy available in sunlight shows that even when/if we reach the limit of our abilities in harnessing the power of the sun in an automobile, the results will still not be practical for a passenger car. Even if we are able one day to make a material stronger than steel that weighs almost nothing, what do we do about our own bodies. Mine weighs a lot. ;)
The fact is that I already use solar power to run my car. Indeed, everyone does, because whether we get our energy from a solar cell, oil, coal, natural gas, or whatever in the solar system, it ultimately came from the sun. In the case of a solar panel it is immediate. In the case of oil, coal, etc. it was just stored there a long time ago through natural processes. :)
I do think that solar power is well suited to provide power for our homes and businesses though because weight and an unpredictable changing of the angle of the sun (like in a moving vehicle) are not factors in that case.
your smart barry. but not in an annoying way.
smart in the Mythbusters way....
With the cost of solar panels, it doesn't even makes sense from a cost perspective most of the time when it's installed on a house where you don't have half the limitations you talk about. On a car... I don't understand the push to put one there where it makes a fraction of the energy.
As you say, it can't be the sole source of power and most likely wouldn't even be a significant source so you still need batteries even if you want to go all electric.
If I'm using solar panels, I'd rather have them installed permanently on my house and charge the car if I insist on using that as a source. The only REAL purpose for solar panels on a car is for marketing.
I guess cars like this are government fakes then!
http://web.mit.edu/solar-cars/www/flash/vehicles/present.shtml
Now I know that this is not a consumer grade car as of yet but you say that a car will NEVER be solar and I disagree. The technology is growing very quickly to be able to build a viable solar car. I'm not saying we will have solar semis next year but the tech is coming and coming quickly.
If solar cars fail it is not due to technology, it will be due to our failure to adopt new and unfamiliar technology. No one wanted to buy a Prius when they first came out because they were new and "slow". I can tell you first hand my Prius is faster than my RAV4 while still getting over double the MPG.
Also see: http://americansolarchallenge.org/event/asc2008/tech/
@ funkmaxtor
As a member of the University of Michigan Solar Car team, it makes me very happy to see you post a link to NASC here on engadget!
Nonetheless, the point that Barry makes is a very valid one. The purpose of our team (and MIT's - and all of the other ones for that matter) is to promote the use of solar power and other alternative sources of energy to help drive innovation. We are VERY aware that what we are able to accomplish is not practical for the typical consumer and probably never will be. I suppose you are right, though - never say never. We'd love to see some of the engineering breakthroughs that we've achieved one day end up in a consumer vehicle.
Look for us at the World Solar Challenge late this year! As always, Go Fast, Go Smooth, Go Blue!
www.umsolar.com
I don't know what to think about this. It's not a bad idea, but looking at where I park my car all the time, it's 95% of the time in a covered garage. Sometimes I really wonder how feasible solar powered cars are.
hey guys,,,
Any of you thinking what i'm thinking. There is a company called nanosolar that basically uses printing technology to make slolar panels,,,they were talking about dyes and stuff,,,one great idea would be if they could make those dyes and use them and spray the cars,,, essentially the car would charge itself by absorbing sunligth and run on the energy stored at night,,could also be a hybrid,,for those xtreme cases,,, and one other thing,,,i think you would be thinking of the day when you car gets scratched ,,,,well i think with nanotechnology they should be able to sort of like repai the dmage by having the nanomachines do the repair.
That would be my dream solar powered car.
Any of you wanna check out the company that i think will rule solar power generation in the coming years,,,, this is their website www.nanosolar.com
*note* commercial products from nanosolar are coming out this year,,,be on the lookout.
ps* i do not have any buisness interest in the above company, i'm just a fan cause i think they have done what others have failed to do for a long time
I can tell you guys are very confident about this...
"Toyata is definetly maybe..."
5hp may not sound much but it can help you get through traffic jam in full electric, you'll save a lot of gas (especially while running AC or heater).
When you get home, recharge the car with the energy collected from the solar roof.
Hymotion Prius L5 (~5kWh) plug-in upgrade has 3kWh of usable energy to enable 40 miles low speed EV range. It can also be used with gas engine (in blended mode) and get 93.5 MPG on average. See Google experiment:
http://www.google.org/recharge/experiment/
You can get 1.2kW solar panels for $4k on ebay. That should be able to charge 3-5kWh on average year round easily.
In summary, technology to double MPG of the Prius is very close. Toyota is just planning ahead.
robmora
There certainly is no point in having solar panels on cars while one can collect more energy from a rooftop. I am no expert in this subject but from what I gather, apart from solar panel efficiency issues, there is also the problem of efficient storage. If we had better storage systems for energy harnessed from renewable sources, then may be half the challenge is solved and we could start recharging our hybrid cars at night ready for the next day. I believe that the CSIRO's UltraBattery is heading the right way in terms of energy storage. The Ultrabattery has been tested on a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) in the UK and has been very successful (over 100,000 miles - without one recharge I believe). So they are looking at developing this technology for use with renewable energy like wind and solar. For more info on the Ultrabattery -- http://www.csiro.au/science/Ultra-Battery.html.
Anyway, I think it won't be long before the technology for recharged vehicles is available. The question is whether it would be available to households or would a multinational take it up and run with it..... and in such case we may see gas stations with electric mains.
The scary thing about this is, are we going to end up paying tax on sunlight? We're already going to pay tax on carbon emission. But then it could the other way round... in Australia they already have government subsidised solar panels for households. So for the future for Aussie folks, perhaps a little early right now, buy an ultrabattery installed HEV, recharge from ultrabattery bank that collects and store energy from roof solar panels... and lets hope sunlight will still be free!