Nissan to use solar chargers to keep batteries charged up

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While solar-powered cars have a long road ahead of them before there is any real chance that our daily driven vehicles will be powered by nothing more than the sun (not counting large arrays powering a single electric car), a small smattering of solar cells hooked up to a car battery is enough to keep the ancient lead-acid lump charged up. Some dealerships have chosen to purchase these small solar chargers individually, and now it appears as if Nissan as a whole will be doing just that for dealerships carrying its vehicles. All North American and European Nissans will be equipped with solar chargers from ICP Solar, as the two companies announced recently.
Tom Clark, Nissan's vice president of sales for the Americas said, "With the new generation of cars including more and more electronics embedded such as GPS navigation systems, DVD player, cruise control, hands-free cell phones, and voice activation, the battery drain on new cars will become more of an issue for major automotive manufacturers and car dealers." Considering how long Nissan's Titan truck is sitting unsold -- the company has an almost unbelievable 489 day supply -- perhaps this wasn't a difficult decision to make.

[Source: CNET]

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