I wonder how much power the solar roof generates. I just don't think given the large capacity of the HV battery that the solar roof would justify the added cost. If they would give some specs as to how much the panel can make...say 50 watt hours, then someone like me might go oh wow 50 watt hours, that would add a few miles of EV range over the course of a day at work.
agreed, a lot of money for a little gain. more gimmicky than anything else. i don't think we'll ever see it in n/a.
So assuming your electricity bill is $0.15/KW, you have to spend $3000 for something that will take 20000 hours to break even... and it will only take you 44.4 hours of direct sunlight to full charge your car for 25 miles, which is about 4 days in the best possible scenario. Nice...
Yeah, a 180 watt solar panel for $3000 is outrageous. Save you dollars and get a decent home solar system. Also the implementation seems strange. Why have a secondary battery collect that measly 180 watts, store it, and then send it to the main HV battery pack? You have more charge/discharge inefficiency with that extra step.
Toyota estimates about 1,000km (620 miles) a year on solar. Obviously it depends on how much sunshine you get per year. It’ll work in Japan since the car is parked during the weekday and they take the train to work. So that means they can drive on the weekend on solar power and charge during the week. It doesn’t work that effectively in the US where we drive everyday so we may just get a few miles per day of solar powered miles.
It is not effective anywhere. 620 miles is roughly one full tank of gas (11.3 gallon), even double the California gas price it at most worth $80. It will take 37 years to start saving money. Most solar panel has a 20 something years life cycle, let alone the life cycle of a car. Why bother?
Because you have to start somewhere? My solar panel is working fine (granted my car is only 9.5 years old, so almost halfway through its life)
I would like to see the solar roof. I have no garage and my car is often parked for days between short trips. Toyota said the solar roof did not meet US roof strength requirements but they seemed to think that could be fixed.
I wish they'd bring it back for Gen4 at least to run a fan like they did in the Gen3. It helped cool the car off some on hot sunny days in summertime.
Were there heat-expansion problems with the solar roof, it was fracturing? Was that @NutzAboutBolts issue?
From what I’ve seen of the actual solar roof it looks stronger than the thin sheet metal a US. PRII gets. It also looks stronger than an average sunroof. The reality is because the solar panel touches the passenger compartment platform laws take over and it drives the same $10 million of crash testing A brand new completely different car would need. Platform laws should be banned, these are the same laws that ban manual transmission options or “motor” options because the cost of completely new crash tests is too high to justify on most vehicles. So while Toyota can’t glue a 15lb semi flexible solar panel to the roof sheet metal due to platform laws, (unless it wants to pay $10mil for a low volume option) the owner can affix a roof rack and a 300lb boat up top without a direct legal issue. The owner can also install a trailer hitch, lower the car, change tires and do many other things the OEM can’t justify due to testing/safety.
They could do that because a panel on the “trunk “ air deflector is technically not considered the passenger area
