Toyota

The government has been seen as slow to act on climate change, while Labor offered an ambitious carbon reduction policy.

The naysayers aren't stopping big automakers and startups from developing the technology. There are some ideas where the payoff for success would be so huge that you just have to try.

With the 200 hydrogen bikes offered to journalists and world leaders at the G7 summit in Biarritz proving popular, manufacturer Pragma Industries has received an order for 1,000 of them from Chilean president Sebastian Pinera. The company’s founder, Pierre Forté, wants the bike to have a societal impact in developing countries.

An increasing number of carmakers and research institutes are developing concepts that combine e-mobility and solar. Thus far, range additions from in-car panels of between 10 and 60km are the limit of innovation. The Fraunhofer roof is tinted with a color that hides the cells but lets through most of the light.

Energy analysts from the United Kingdom have found that many of the world’s largest car manufacturers that are launching EVs, or looking to launch EVs, are engaged in an “unprecedented” level of collaboration in order to share the costs and risks inherent in EV development. Cornwall Insight found that the collaboration could see a major boom in supply from the early 2020s.

Car manufacturing giant Toyota Motor Corp is to begin trialling later this month a new version of its Prius hybrid car, this time with up to 860 watts of thin film solar that will be able to charge its “solar battery” as it drives, and add more than 50kms to its fossil fuel-free driving range.

Toyota is testing a new version of its solar panel topped Prius. But solar energy is unlikely to ever account for more than a fraction of the electricity required by vehicles