Chris WebMaster

TOKYO (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co. said on Monday it plans to start mass-producing solar cells in 2007, eyeing growing demand for environmentally friendly energy sources.

Japan's third-biggest automaker said in a statement it would build a new factory for solar cells on the site of a car plant in Kumamoto prefecture, on the southwestern Japanese island of Kyushu.

The company aims to generate annual sales of 5 billion to 8 billion yen ($40 million to $70 million) from solar cells once the factory's output reaches full annual capacity of 27.5 megawatts, enough to power about 8,000 households.

Honda will be competing with major solar cell manufacturers such as Kyocera Corp. <6971, Sharp Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp.

A Honda spokeswoman did not say when the factory would hit full capacity and declined to disclose the size of the investment, which the Nihon Keizai business daily estimated would be just short of 10 billion yen.

Honda said its solar cells would be composed of non-silicon compound materials, consuming half as much energy and generating 50 percent less carbon dioxide during production when compared with conventional solar cells made from silicon.

The company aims to sell the solar cells for both residential and industrial use. It will initially target the Japanese market.

Prior to mass production, Honda plans to manufacture and sell solar cells in a limited area in Japan from late 2006.

Shares of Honda were up 1.7 percent at 6,680 yen in late morning trade, compared with a 0.30 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei share average.

Source.

Yahoo News

Samson

why do we have so many different technologies going on all at once? hybrid, fuel cell, solar, etc..

wouldnt we go farther focusing on one.. and perfecting it.. ?

stickyshifter

I thought hybrid with eletric and gasoline engine is doing pretty well. Since electric is already based on what we have from gasoline car designs, can we just slowly turn complete eletric instead of fuel cell?

Troopa-R

Well, this isn't necessarily toward automotive purposes. And it sounds like Honda is diversifying. Hybrid powertrains are admittedly a temporary solution and fuel cells have yet to prove that they are a safe and viable energy source. By investing in different technologies now, Honda is saving itself from falling behind in the future.

I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but your attitude is exactly why the Americans and Europeans are lagging so far behind the Japanese in hybrid technology. By the time they even started considering it, the Japanese already had about ten years of research under their belt and production vehicles on the road.

mayonaise

maybe, but ever heard of the expression; "don't put all your eggs in one basket?" like Troopa-R said, it's called diversifying, and most successful businesses have to do it at some point.

bluetwo

Don't mean to get off topic but there's also the little problem with the energy required to make hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles. Which is the fact that right now it takes about three times the effort and does more environmental damage than the gasoline equivilant.

jaje

hyrdogen is the most abudant element in the universe - it's just usually attached with something else (it's also highly reactive and light that most containment cannot hold it) - it takes a lot of energy to seperate hydrogen (mainly we get it from natural gas as it is abundant and widely disbursed.

solar energy is literally free and unused (solar power is very widely used in areas of high sunlight) - as technology gets better to produce panels themselves and the panels become more efficient you don't need 90 degree angles to effectively produce energy...if we can harness solar power we can use its energy to power our home and refine hydrogen

whatever7

Can they stick a piece on top of the hybrid Civic? A fake "targa" if you will.