By Kevin Buckland
TOKYO (Reuters) - Inspired by new ultra-thin solar panels developed for satellites, a project led by Toyota Motor Corp (T:7203) is experimenting with a sun-powered Prius that it hopes will one day require no plugging in.
In the Japanese government-funded demonstration project, Toyota engineers fitted solar panels designed by Sharp Corp (T:6753) to the hood, roof, rear window and spoiler to see how much juice the sun can generate.
The electricity from the panels goes directly to the drive battery, so the Prius can charge while moving or when parked.
On a good day, the charge can be sufficient for up to 56 kilometres (35 miles) of travel, more than the 47 kilometres driven a day by the average American, according to a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
But the performance drops off quickly if it is cloudy or even when it's too hot. If used in real-world driving in those conditions, the Prius would have to be plugged in to recharge.
The solar cells are super-slim - just 0.03 millimetres, making them malleable enough to form-fit to the body of a car. The engineers needed to create a buffer between the car and the cells to protect them, so the actual solar panel modules are closer to a centimetre thick.
The trunk of the car is filled with batteries for the solar panels, adding an extra weight of around 80 kilograms (180 lb).
Making the entire package lighter and bringing down the extremely high costs are among the biggest challenges for the technology, said Satoshi Shizuka, Toyota's lead engineer on the project, adding that commercialisation likely remained "years away".