Toyota denies plans to build solar car
by Sam Abuelsamid on Jan 5th 2009 at 3:49PM 
I warned you not to hold your breath on that solar-powered Toyota. A recent story from Reuters indicated that the Japanese automaker was developing a solar-powered car although a plug-in car would be an intermediate step along the way. In spite of the excitement from some of our commenters, It now looks like this car might be even further out than I surmised. The comparatively low power density of photovoltaic cells severely limits the type of vehicle that could be built and powered this way. Toyota is apparently aware of these limitations and spokesperson Jana Hartline told AllCarsElectric "we're not aware of any such vehicle, planned or otherwise." So there. [Source: AllCarsElectric]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Red 3:55PM (1/05/2009)
Wouldn't be the first time a carmaker denied something existed and then "surprised" everyone with it at some point in the future.
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jharlan 4:23PM (1/05/2009)
A solar powered car would make sense on the moon, but it takes a lot of exposed surface area here to produce any horsepower. When I read the original article on the Toyota solar powered car, the warning bells should have started clanging, because it just doesn't pass the bulls***t test. Whoever originated that article must be pretty gullible.
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Chris M 4:26PM (1/05/2009)
Wouldn't be the first time that somebody made up a tall tale, and it got spread around by gossip, and the news media picked it up and reported it as "news".
Snopes has a long list of hoaxes and bogus rumours and urban legends that turned out to be not quite true.
Now, several auto makers have built solar racers just for the publicity of a "solar race", but they are wildly expensive, tiny one person vehicles with limited power, and they spend almost as much time parked with their solar cells facing the sun as they do on the road. Not at all practical for everyday driving.
Until the cost of solar cells comes way down and efficiency goes way up, the only role for solar cells in cars is to provide power for a little cooling while parked in the sun.
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ziv 4:48PM (1/05/2009)
Small solar cells on a car make perfect sense if you need to keep the battery pack cool or, like Chris said, to keep the car itself cool for comfort, but if the latter then the cost of the cells will have to be minimal. Even if you cover the car with photovoltaics, you will be lucky to get 4 miles of extra range, and that is if there are no trees to put your car in the shade or that the sun is at the perfect angle to the car. Nice idea, but photovoltaics belong on the roof of our homes, not our cars.
Unless you have a parabolic mirror mounted on the north side of the parking lot, reflecting the sunlight onto 3 or 4 dedicated recharging spots by using the mirror to concentrate the suns power... Then you might get 6 or 7 miles of extra range from the solar cells, and/or an incredibly hot car when you get back. Grin.
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gorr 7:43PM (1/05/2009)
There's a way to power a car with a simple solar panel. Toyota president voiced it 2 years ago when he said that he can build a car able to run from new-york to los-angeles while cleaning the air. He was talking of the latest experiments with solar panels done in u.s.a, denmark, germany, england, israel, south-africa, japan, france, spain, cuba, congo, anthartic, malaisia, india, pakistan, taiwan, etc. These panels produce hydrogen gas with solar power and water.
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Lad 1:18AM (1/06/2009)
Strange that this article just came out just after my trip. What timing!
I just got back from Japan and while I was there I interviewed the CEO of Toyota. He was rather secretive about the new Solar powered car; however, I was able to talk with one of the main engineers on the project and I learned the car would be introduced in 2010 and that Toyota had accomplished a major breakthrough in solar cell research by building a 200% efficient panel and they had invented a highly efficient electric motor and controller capable of actually multiplying energy from a battery made from California dry clay; he called it the SCEC(Shasta Casta Electric Cell).
Typical of Japan...you know they like to name their cars differently there, like Fair lady, etc...well they named this new state of the art car "The Flying Reindeer" and it is scheduled to be introduced next December. I have lots more information on the car but I'm sorry i must cut this short; my wife tells me she has to return me to the "home" by eight o'clock.
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Colin 8:51AM (1/06/2009)
Let's see if this real news gets even 1/10 the pub that the fake story got. I'm guessing it won't. After all, Toyota = good.
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Brent 1:26AM (1/23/2009)
They have the means, just not the effort for investment.. bums.. two words toyota *Multijunctional Cells*, get going.
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