Featured Prius Gen 5 for 2021?

I have solar, it makes sense in certain applications but not really in a mid sized hybrid or phev car. I charge my car with solar from the roof of my house, hill does the same thing. It should last 30 years and doesn't make my car heavier or more likely to need more repairs in a crash or hail or just over time.

How easy is it to manufacture onto the hood and roof of a car? If it was easy they all would be doing it, and the prime sold in japan would come with a 300 watt cheap option instead of the expensive 180 watt panel they are selling.

Its not the weight. They are changing how they are building the unibody to incorporate it. Do me a favor. glue or tape or epoxy or rivot that to your car, run cabling and inverter to charge the battery, tell me how it looks and if it will last and be inexpensive.

Well the reason isn't that we can't but that not many are willing to pay for the thing. You can add 3kwh of batteries to a car rather easily, and that can be charged from a 1 kw solar panel on your roof, every time the car is at home. But go ahead buy what ever your want.

I'm telling you the reason it does not make sense, but I'm sure a few will buy these things they have already. Put it as standard equipment and you do drive the cost of the panel and electronics down, but the car becomes more expensive than if you didn't force people to buy it. The solar roof is not an option on toyota's in north america simply because there were not enough takers to make toyota money. Nissan scaled back and has a little cheap 5 watt panel to charge the 12V battery. Hyundai does offer it.
Hyundai Put A Solar Panel On An Electric Car But It's False Green

 

Prius Prime at full price without tax break also doesn't pay off compared to normal one. At least in my country.

Prius PHV Sol: 35,300 €
Prius Sol: 28.650 €
Prius PHV Solar: 37,800 €

Plug costs you 6,650 €, solar costs additional 2,500 €

 

The Solar option for the Prime was around $3000 in Japan. Say it does add $1000 to the MSRP if it was standard equipment. That is a thousand more added to the difference between the car and the non-plug-in, and a thousand more closer to being a $30k car at base.

The solar for cooling existed on luxury cars before the gen3.

 

Also a small solar panel on the standard Prius hybrid could help with maintaining the battery in a pandemic world and if setup properly Excess power could be used to cool and even top the little main pack so you gain a few moments of EV operation at startup and potentially a little better economy by bypassing the horrifying startup sequence until you are out of the driveway.

 

haven't kept up with flexible panels, other than knowing they are not as efficient. Found a review of a guy who put 500 watts' worth (12V =40amps) on top of his motor home;
Flexible RV Solar Issues Revealed - Our One Year Review
Long story short, he describes how easily they get damaged from heat, as they cup (warp from Heat which causes dirt to collect) & get scratched, & get gouges. Not so - with less expensive glass. That's reflected in a typical 10yr vs 30 yr warranty. He says he's getting 25 amps versus the brand new rating of 40amps .... ~ 35% efficiency drop. That's not to say it doesn't work. Even a home-built plug-in hybrid works. It's whether or not it's as robust as a manufacturer can do, who has to take care of all that stuff over a certain amount of years under warranty, & he has to build that repair cost into the equation.
Does that mean your panels f"all flat"? Of course not. Like much of life, it's not all black & white ... working wonderfully all the time versus "fall flat". Sure, flexible panels work. It just doesn't mean that it's ideal in many respects, at least right now, present-day technology.
.

 

Like I said sure as an option, its an option now, but there are not many takers. Part of the low take rate on the prius was it was only a 0.050 kw panel for $2000 and stopped you from choosing other options while only operating fans. The prime is an improved 0.18 kw panel that charges the battery, but the extra electronics and improved solar cells cost more 2500 euros (about $2850 USD at today's exchange) but it required more r&d to pass US crash tests. Not a big technical hurdle - hyundai passes with its 0.205 kw panel on the sonata hybrid.

Toyota claims that it can add 2.2 miles a day if you park it in the sun, hyundai 2 miles a day, IMHO this is quite optimistic. Electek says if you leave the prime out for 10 days it will charge the battery, like being left at the airport.

Now we are thinking of making the next gen a dedicated phev with 2 battery sizes. Keep the battery the same size as the current prius prime 8.8 kwh and you get 25 miles of aer (EPA) or 45 km (wltp) or if you add the solar roof you might boost it to 27 miles or 50 km (these don't convert as they are too different tests and wltp is more optimistic). But simply make it 10 kwh and you get 28 miles epa and 51 km wltp. These might increase if electronics switch to SiC and simply because less percentage SOC needs to be reserved for hybrid operations. Now toyota's extra cost for the bigger battery would be about $200, so adding 400 euros to the price would result to big profits. Toyota Europe said it sold 1700 solar options in 3 years.

Toyota brings back the solar panel on the Plug-In Prius Prime - but now it powers the car - Electrek

The flex panels would not fit warranty requirements they need to stand up to vibration, hail, rain, etc. They use glass panels on these toyota and hyundai solar cars. This adds weight but also reliability. The angle makes them not as efficient as the panels on yours or my roof. They can use more efficient cells but then price goes up.