Toyota is working on a solar-powered car that will essentially keep on going without the need of any sort of external charging. The project is a work in progress by Toyota Motor Corp. in collaboration with Sharp Corp., and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization of Japan(NEDO).

The companies are at present testing the solar panel implementation on a Toyota Prius.

toyota prius with solar energy

“The solar car’s advantage is that — while it can’t drive for a long range — it’s really independent of charging facilities,” said Koji Makino, project manager at Toyota.

In case you do not know, Toyota and Hyundai have already commercialized certain models with solar panels attached on the roof. However, those panels could not supply the essential power required and they could be charged only when the vehicle is in a stationary state. Also, the mileage offered by those solar cars was significantly low and stood at about 6 kilometers.

toyota prius charging on solar
Image Credits | Bloomberg

The prototype these brands are currently working on manages to reach an efficiency level of more than 34%, which is indeed an improvement from 20% efficiency offered by other solar panels, thanks to the inputs offered by Sharp. Moreover, the solar cell being tested has just 0.03 mm thickness and gets charged even when the vehicle is being driven.

“If the car is driven four days a week for a maximum of 50 kilometers a day, there’s no need to plug into an outlet”, says Yamazaki from NEDO.

While solar cars sound exciting, it has a lot of limitations hindering the large scale implementation. “This is not a technology we are going to see widely used in the next decades. It’s going to take a long time,” said Takeshi Miyao, an auto analyst at consultancy Carnorama.

TellForce Blog team will have to keep track of the advancements in research and development of solar tech in the upcoming years to know how close we are to solar cars. So, don’t forget to bookmark the site.

Also what are your views on solar cars? Tell us in the comments.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Captcha verification failed!
CAPTCHA user score failed. Please contact us!