Prius promotion plants giant solar flowers with free electricity, WiFi in cities

As part of Toyota's strange but seemingly effective marketing campaign for its new 2010 Prius hybrid, the Japanese automaker has rolled out a bunch of 18-foot tall solar flowers to various urban centers all around the United States, starting with Boston's Prudential Plaza. Next up: New York, followed by Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

According to Toyota, these so-called solar flowers represent the Prius theme of "Harmony between Man, Nature, and Machine." Apparently, they achieve this by providing seating for up to ten people and by featuring laptop and cell phone recharging stations and access to free wireless internet service. Understandably, there's probably not quite enough juice from the petal-shaped solar panels to provide all the necessary energy for those ten people, so we're guessing there are some high-powered batteries involved in there somewhere.

[Source: Toyota]