Anyone out there have the solar roof package on the new 2010 Prius? I've been waiting for one to come to the East Coast, and the dealer just told me that the solar ventilation only runs for 1 hour then it shuts off. This doesn't sound right to me, and seems odd that Toyota would make something so counter-intuitive as that sounds. Looking for any information on this before I make my decision on whether or not to keep waiting.

Thanks,
Matt

 

Like all those solar landscape lights there is probably a small rechargeable battery, or one LARGE capacitor, in the circuit. If the sky clouds over the cabin airflow exhausting blower will then run only until the battery(?) is discharged.....an hour....???

 

From what I was able to find out online (as we all know, Dealership knowledge is low on these cars) there is no battery attached in any way to the solar roof package. It runs solely from the PV on the roof. Needless to say, my knowledge of solar panels (I have a 5.2 kw array on my homes roof) tells me that while this option is a nice idea, it's got a long way to go before it becomes really viable. Now, it may be good in the desert states, but for the rest of us, not so good. Given the size of a typical 200 watt peak production solar panel, the production of the panel on the car is roughly going to be 100 watts. Then you take into account all the funky angles of the roof, and you lose atleast 20% efficiency with the sun directly over-head. Take out more for non-direct sunlight, and you're probably down to about 50 watt's peak viable production (won't even get into cloud cover issues) To cool off that car, I would assume you'd need probably decent fans pulling roughly 60 watts to keep air flowing nicely.

Just my thoughts on it, and no hard calculations but I figure that I'd be pretty close. Needless to say, I'd prefer it ran off the hybrid battery pack somehow to compensate. I believe the battery pack holds about 11 kw/h from what I've read, so 60 watts/hr isn't much use at all. Obviously it would need a safety built in so that it doesn't totally drain the battery.

 

Ask your question at http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii-...us-main-forum/. A few folks including the moderator of that section (HTMLSpinnr) have the solar roof.