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What do you get when you have hundreds of unsold cars sitting around on the lots during recession-like conditions? You get a heck of a lot of drained batteries, and Nissan is tired of it.

Last month, Nissan announced that they would start featuring their vehicles with portable in dash car battery chargers to help keep their vehicle batteries fresh. Besides these vehicles on dealer lots not being test driven by interested customers, new vehicles currently have more electric components than you could shake an entire redwood forest at.

You’ve got your stereo, amplifier, alarm system, navigation unit, iPod, cell phone charger, DVD entertainment system, and now even a microwave it would seem. These draw a lot of juice out of a battery that sits for over a month without properly charging.

In fact, Ford has even recognized this problem and recommends all 2005 and up Mustang drivers to keep their vehicles on a trickle charger when it’s not in use for extended periods of time. These non-daily driven vehicles receive the most strain it would seem because to fully recharge a battery, you need to either drive a vehicle often, or long distances.

This is where a solar power charger can come in handy. ICP Solar is the company working with Nissan on their solar chargers for dealers, but you can also purchase similar models for your own application. These gadgets go anywhere from $100 to $1,000, depending on your power requirements.

Solar powered chargers could be the wave of the future… but for now they are can’t do a whole lot beyond the scope of trickle charging, but that is because the technology hasn’t quite caught up with how to effectively harvest a substantial amount of the suns energy into a small area.

Take the design of the next generation Toyota Prius. Even with the entire roof covered in solar panels, it will have no more capability than powering a portion of the air conditioning. But technology is forever improving, and it won’t be long until they will be capable of a lot more.

Until then, as the winter months begin to once again ascend upon us, solar battery chargers are a great way to keep your battery primed through the coldest months. They work when its cloudy or blue, with old cars or new, and the electricity’s free too!