The president and CEO of Veridian Corporation, a company that is responsible for distributing electricity to more than 107,000 customers in a dozen Ontario cities, drives a hybrid vehicle on a daily basis to assess its environmental performance and convenience factor. But here's the twist: Solera-designed solar panels have been added to the roof and connected to rechargeable batteries made by Hymotion.This plug-in hybrid vehicle, jointly developed by Veridian Corporation (electricity supplier), Solera Sustainable Energies Company (provider of solar power solutions) and Hymotion (provider of hybrid and fuel cell systems), features three solar panels that will generate up to 240 watts in full sunshine. The new sunroof -- literally -- can contribute enough energy to allow the vehicle to travel up to an additional 14 km in electric-only mode on a sunny summer day. If you have to drive longer, the combustion engine will take over. By using solar panels during the day as well as a standard outlet during the night to recharge the batteries, the combustion engine operates considerably less often and, as a result, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. Veridian currently has a number of hybrid vehicles from GM and Ford in its green fleet and is investigating solar-power retrofits of these vehicles. Now there's another interesting idea!
Hybrid... and solar-powered