The internet is buzzing this morning with a report from the Nikkei business daily newspaper in Japan that Toyota plans to add solar panels to the next generation Prius, in addition to its plug-in capability.

Most of the comments seem to be skeptical of the amount of value adding the panels can bring, but Canadian engineer Steve Lapp can provide actual data since he modified his 2001 Prius back in 2005 to include solar panels on the roof. His initial three panel system generated around 270W, but he was hoping to boost that to 360W with the addition of a fourth panel.

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Out in San Francisco last night I came across one of Google’s plugin hybrids parked in the garage under the building they have office space in. There were three spaces in the corner of the garage nearest to the door to the Google space marked as reserved for Google Fleet vehicles, and all three spaces had retractable extension cords mounted on the wall in front of them.

Only one Toyota Prius was there, and despite being painted in RechargeIT.org colours and saying that it was a plugin hybrid, it was not actually plugged in. Furthermore, we couldn’t actually see any obvious place to plug it in (normally, the after market conversions have a small connector on the rear bumper).

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