Tuesday, Jul 8th 2008 by Abby McVay
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Nikkei, a Japanese business news source is reporting that Toyota will be unveiling a Prius that will have built-in solar panels. It is also said to be manufactured by Kyocera Corp. There is no official word on this, since Toyota has not actually confirmed the reports just yet.
If it were created, Toyota would be the first major manufacturer to add a car with built-in solar panels and release it to the mass market. The third generation Prius isn’t due to be released until 2009 or the 2010 model year.
The picture shown here is quite obviously an artists rendering, since this is very much still a rumor. Hopefully soon Toyota will give us some juicy details and confirm these rumors.
[via treehugger]
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The Prius above, when and if it gets built, will be the SECOND solar power augmented hybrid to the market. The first is the Aptera Typ-1 ( http://www.apterra.com ). The Typ-1 uses its solar array to do exactly the same thing that the Prius is proposing to do (run an environmental control unit)… I wonder where Toyota got the idea?!