Your solar Prius coming soon
Toyota working on solar powered EVsAccording to unconfirmed reports, Toyota is "secretly" working on solar powered electric vehicles. To start, the vehicles might only be partially powered by solar power, while offering the ability to fully charge via roof top solar panels. The long term goal, however, is to have the solar cars achieve all of their power from the vehicle's own solar cells.
Labels: electric cars, solar hybrid vehicles
posted by Dahcredyns at
10:28 AM
4 Comments:
I am currently a member of Missouri S&T solar car design team. We have been building and racing solar cars since 1993. It's good to keep in mind that solar technology has not been efficient enough to completely power a full sized car. The design of full sized cars are not aero dynamic enough to even make this possible in the near future. Solar is however, a good idea as a supplemental energy source on electric cars.
Solar can still contribute a great deal to powering auxiliary stuff on cars...I'm sure the drain is enormous and smaller batteries (and less waste) could be used if charged by solar instead of a belt generator.
Of course it isn't there yet, but the Venturi solar car is getting in the ballpark, for instance. Imagine, a small carbon fiber body with next, next gen solar technology coupled with much lighter batteries, regen. braking, aerodynamics, etc. - maybe even fuel cells.
Such a vehicle isn't technologically inconceivable. The technology obviously isn't there yet, but I don't think such an extrapolation is out of line.
We get enough sunshine here in Arizona that merely using it to recharge the batteries would be a big plus
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