Toyota is rather reluctant when it comes to talking about its future products, albeit nobody can keep a secret forever, can they? The word around the campfire is that the third generation of the Toyota Prius hybrid, expected to be launched next year, will receive some electrical systems that will be powered with the help of solar panels, although news about how much they will cost or how many of the cars will be fitted with such panels has proven somehow harder to leak out of the Japanese company.

The ever rising price of petrol has pushed Toyota to the limit as customers demanded more Prius hybrids to be manufactured, while SUVs and pickup trucks continue to scare off even more consumers with their 'astronomical' petrol rate per mile. Nonetheless, other rival car manufacturers, such as Honda, are gaining ground by announcing that they will also start producing hybrid vehicles, but at a much lower cost.

A lot of big names in the industry, besides the two Japanese giants, seem to have approached a rather different strategy, by closely working with battery manufacturers in order to maximize the efficiency of lithium-ion batteries and store more electric energy so that the vehicles can cover longer distances. Toyota is targeting the 1 million sold units per year milestone by 2010 and intends to attract consumers with fuel-saving solutions.

Currently, solar panels alone are not efficient enough to power cars, a setback further complicated by problems regarding the storing of the generated energy. Tests conducted on a Prius model showed that, on solar power alone, the car would only cover 15 kilometers a day.

"It's more of a symbolic gesture. It's very difficult to power much more than that with solar energy," said a source with knowledge of the plans of Toyota.

In 1997 Toyota became the first company ever to mass-produce a hybrid vehicle, with its Prius model, and since then it sold more than a million units across the globe. Company officials did not comment on the news regarding the plans for the third generation of Prius.