That's good news. It's at the foundation of why I bought the Prius. I won't buy the Gen 3 because we can't afford to do that (I'm guessing), but I'm totally supportive of the effort. And I'm looking forward to stronger panels to actually power the car.

Hopefully the market stays this tight and gas stays this high so I can sell my '08 for a good price and buy the new gen 3 in 2011. Let all hope they get a phev by then as well.

How much do they expect those rooftop cells to generate? Enough to run the air conditioner if the car is parked in the sun? I don't see the use.

It really only makes sense if there's a battery worth recharging. They certainly won't power the car but they could help run some of the auxilliary systems, taking a little load off of the battery. Not worth the price of the panels. They must be planning to install a larger capacity battery that can be charged whist the car languishes in the sun during the day. Seems a little odd, but I like the spirit of it.

I can see the advantage of using solar to offset some of the draw from the Air Conditioning. It was F'n hot here today with smoke in the air from everything being on fire in N. California. AC is mandatory here in the summer.

i didn't that you could generate enough power off of a few sq feet of roof to run an a/c system - even a small car sized one - but i hope i'm wrong. one of the resident engineers want to give us some numbers?

If it's an option....I'll pass. I don't see it being cost effective.

It has come up on PTS before; IIRC about 1.5 kW to run the Prius AC. You probably couldn't get that much power from a solar cell setup on the Prius, and it would be subject to prevailing conditions, which direction the car is facing, etc., but you could offset some of the AC load which means you would have more available for other tasks, like moving the car down the road.

More like you could run a fan to limit the heat buildup in the sun.

No way could you put enough solar panels on the car to run the existing air conditioning.

Seriously doubt it. The price is high due to the lack of supply. The bottleneck is the battery, and Toyota is setting up a pair of new factories just for batteries.

now, that is way cool!

RobH is right. That was what I read from other report on the solar panel use on the next Prius. Use it for ventilation when Prius is parked under the sun. Pretty much what you can buy from Ebay today that hangs on the window glass, but with much better integration and in a bigger scale.

Audi has been offering this (solar powered AC) as an option on some of their high end vehicles here in Europe for years now. Works a treat.

The most efficient PV cells are around 15 watts/square foot. As others have said, with that amount of power I'd expect them to just run some kind of fan to circulate air in a parked car to help keep it cooler.

I love the idea, but say good goodbye to having a roof rack on your car. Can't take that away from me.

It will be interesting to see how much of an effective role the solar panels will play in the Gen IIIs FE. At this point, it sounds pretty gimmicky.

If they have an air conditioning-light mode the panels might be enough to run the system. I would bet this will be the primary use, for when the car has to sit in the sun and broil. It is a high end option so could be a luxury feature and not just an energy saving one.

This weekend I had to leave my car parked in the sun here in Los Angeles. When I got in I could hardly touch the steering wheel it was so hot. I've always wanted something that could keep the interior cooler.
(I've tried the little solar window fans. They don't do anything.)

On the minus side, that means the climate control system will get more wear and tear, and you'd have to replace the internal air filter (I think there is one) sooner.