CarSeekBlog

The 2010 Prius that will be available later this year (fully loaded for around $30,000), will be sporting an automotive first — integrated solar panels. Hold on. Don’t get your green shorts in a twist. The panels won’t contribute to propulsion or battery life, but will help power the air conditioning and will reduce the electrical load on other systems. These improvements and a better drag coefficient (0.25 as opposed to 0.26) give this third generation Prius a combined fuel efficiency of 50 mpg.

Other than that. It’s a Prius. The stance is a little longer and wider and the motor is a 1.8 liter Atkinson four cylinder (up from the previous 1.5 liter unit). The Hybrid Synergy Drive with its twin electric motors is the same. The new engine boosts the total hp to 134 over the 110 with which Prius owners have had to content themselves. That’s taken the zero to sixty time under the mid-10 second range to 9.8 seconds. It’s not a sports car, but for a hybrid, that’s pretty zippy. There will be three custom driving modes: “power” to up responsiveness, ECO to increase fuel efficiency, and EV-Drive to force all-electric operation at slow speeds for up to a mile.

Since 1997 Toyota has sold 1.5 million hybrids worldwide, making the Prius the undisputed leader in the genre. There’s every indication that the 2010 will remain just as popular with environmental and fuel-conscious drivers. It’s not the cheapest car out there, but it is the first truly successful mainstream hybrid and with the inclusion of the solar panels, it shows Toyota is still upping its game, even in small increments.

Filed under: Going Green, Toyota by Shorty