Kyocera Corporation has announced its successful bid to supply solar panels for the new Toyota Prius.

The Kyocera solar panels will power a ventilation system, an optional feature for the hybrid car. The system will drive the fans while the car is parked during the daytime; automatically moderating temperature rise inside of the vehicle even during hot seasons.

Let the drooling begin!  We have our first confirmed 2010 Prius owner in North America!  Julie, aka winebuff on the PriusChat forums, picked up her Package IV with Solar Roof on May 17th out in Oregon.

She didn't waste much time before she came onto PriusChat gloating!  Now get back on the road and report back on MPGs!

Check out this 5 minute behind the scenes video on how the 2010 Prius commercial "Harmony" was conceptualized and produced.  The video ends with the final product: the "Harmony" commercial you may have seen on TV (or PriusChat) over the last couple of days.

Special thanks to Toyota for providing PriusChat with exclusive access to this video.

Feel free to embed this video on your site and share it through Facebook or Twitter!

Toyota is poised to air their first commercial for the 2010 Prius tonight during "House" on FOX and "Castle" on ABC.  The ad uses people to represent various parts of the environment and the Prius appears to "turn on" the environment as it drives.  It is a pretty sexy car...

Here's the video for you:

Say goodbye to the 2009 Prius, and say hello to the 2010!  Yesterday, Toyota updated toyota.com/prius to reflect the new 2010 model.  This change-over has also revealed new information on available Prius accessories, including a pretty rockin' Lower Rocker Molding.

You can check it all out at www.toyota.com/prius.

Thanks to PriusChat forum member, Paradox, for the peeled eyes.

Wired's Ben Mack wrote an article yesterday about engineers at the University of Technology Sydney who have built a plug-in Toyota Prius they claim is capable of reducing power shortages by returning energy to the grid.

Every Sunday I watch This Week with George Stephanopoulos, which features a round-table discussion to talk about the week's news.  George's literal right-hand man on the round-table is George Will, a conservative columnist for Newsweek.  I have no problem with George Will.  He spoke at my brother's college graduation and I enjoyed listening to him (I stayed awake through it, at least).  When he is talking about issues he has a lot of knowledge about, he presents good arguments and admits when his "side of the aisle" is wrong.  But

Last month I told you about the sales slide the Prius saw in March, and today the April numbers were released and actually look WORSE.  Toyota sold 8,385 Prius units in April, down from 8,924 units last month.  Last April was when sales really started to kick into gear (before gas really even started going up), but this April sales were off a staggering 61% compared to April 2008.  2009 Prius sales are down almost 50% compared to 2008.

PriusChat has been represented pretty well over the last few years at the Green Grand Prix, and hopefully this year will see even more PriusChatters show up.

For those of you who have never heard of the Green Grand Prix, here's some information from their website:

The Asahi reported Toyota's 2010 Prius production plan has been revised to build 495k 2010 Prius in FY09 (ends March 2010).