When Toyota's popular hybrid gets a makeover in 2010, the car will now harness the power of the sun to operate its own air conditioning.
The first Priuses shipped in 1997 in Japan, and worldwide in 2000. Toyota last redesigned the car in 2003 to make it quicker and more efficient, and automotive analysts have widely expected another revision to come soon with additional enhancements.
Reports from Reuters and Japanese business news service Nikkei indicate that one of these new features would be solar panels from Kyocera. As solar panels small enough to fit on a car's roof cannot produce a great deal of energy, only the air conditioning would be partially powered by the technology.
Toyota is not commenting on these reports, although a company source told the Associated Press that details of the third-generation Prius would be revealed next May.
Solar panels would appear on higher-end models. If true, the Prius would be the first vehicle to include the technology commercially. While scientists have been building solar cars for awhile, the designs are nowhere near practical or fast enough to operate on highways.
Powering the air conditioning with solar energy does have an environmental benefit. No doubt you've already noticed, whenever you run your AC in your vehicle, there's a significant drop in fuel efficiency. In this day of $4-per gallon-gas in the US, any way to save fuel can be seen as a good thing.
Those same gas prices are also contributing to a surge in hybrid sales. Toyota expects to sell a million hybrids per year by 2010, and have a hybrid version of every model in its lineup by 2020. Other companies such as Nissan, Honda, and Ford are also all working towards expanding their hybrid lines.
Toyota is not the first to experiment with solar powering a Prius: Solar technology entrepreneur Greg Johanson is already offering an upgrade to model years from 2004 to 2006 that is said to increase fuel efficiency by up to 29%.
译文:
第三代丰田混合动力车普锐斯（Prius）
丰田备受欢迎的混合动力车于2010年大翻新，该款车将可利用太阳能运作车内空调。
首款普锐斯于1997年在日本推出，于2000年全球推出。2003年丰田上一次的重新设计使该款车更迅速和更高效。汽车分析师已广泛预期有着额外增强功能的修改版本很快会出现。
来自路透社(Reuters)和日经（Nikkei）日本商业新闻服务的报道指出新功能之一是产自京瓷株式会社（Kyocera）的太阳能电池板。为了适合车顶，太阳能电池板很小，所产生的能量也不会很多，该技术只能为空调提供部分支持。
丰田没有对这些报道作出回应，尽管一公司内来源已告诉美联社（the Associated Press）有关第三代普锐斯的细节将于明年5月公布。
太阳能电池板将会出现在较高端的车款上。如果是真的，普锐斯将会是第一款商业化运用该技术的汽车。科学家们已经造太阳能汽车有一段时间，而那些设计都不实用，车的速度更不可能在高速公路上行驶。
用太阳能运行空调的确对环境有利。毫无疑问你已经注意到，无论什么时候你打开车内的空调，燃料效率就会大大降低。现如今在美国4美元1加仑汽油的价格，能节省汽油毕竟被视为好事。
那些同样的高油价也促进了混合动力车的销售增长。丰田预期至2010年混合动力车的销售量达到一百万辆每年，到2020年每款车都有相应的混合动力版本。其他公司如尼桑、本田和福特也都在扩大他们的混合动力车生产线。
丰田不是第一个尝试用太阳能为普锐斯提供动力的，太阳能技术创新者葛瑞格·卓翰逊（Greg Johanson）于2004至2006年期间已为该款提供升级，据说其技术可将燃料效率提高至29%。