Will 2011 will be the year of electric car? It is hard to say, but most of the electric car manufacturers are finally ready with mainstream electric vehicles powered with the ‘Go Green’ mantra.  Ford Motors is set to unveil its first fully electric sedan later in the year, and is partnering with San Jose-based solar panel maker SunPower, to offer solar energy systems to those purchasing their electric cars.

As per their ‘Drive Green For Life’ program, Ford is offering Solar roof panels that can be mounted onto the roof top of the house. The panels are capable of generating 3,000 kilowatt-hours a year which can fuel the Ford electric car for about 12,000 miles (about 1,000 miles per month). The cost of the solar panels after federal tax credits would be around $10,000 with some more rebates from local and state tax credits.

SunPower designs, manufactures and delivers solar panel systems to residential, business, and government customers.  The solar system that both SunPower and Ford are offering consist of 147 square feet of rooftop panels, with 11 panels all together. The panels come with a 25-year warranty from SunPower.

“The idea is, how do you run an entrepreneurial Silicon Valley company and leverage the balance sheet of a top 20 company? With the housing market still in a major lull, and gas prices unstable and ever rising, it would make sense for a solar power company to target the active energy culprit American’s are eager to invest in electric vehicle cars.” said Tom Werner, Chief Executive Officer of SunPower.

Ford car owners can monitor the solar panels output through an iPhone app or through a web application.

Ford’s been looking to technology to improve its customer appeal for a while now, with features like the cloud based Sync services that let drivers use voice commands to look up businesses, directions, traffic updates, and other information.

Nissan offers app for Android and BlackBerry phones called Nissan LEAF for its all-electric car, the Leaf.  The app allows users to check the state of battery charge, remotely start a battery charge, and see statistics related to battery charge status, estimated driving range and climate control.

General Motors also has a similar app called OnStar, which enables users to get real-time information about the car’s fuel economy, remote ignition, remote locking and unlocking of the doors and remote climate control.

HP is also looking to the automotive industry as another outlet for its webOS platform. The company plans to provide licensing for appliances and automobile solutions using webOS.  As part of this initiative, HP is planning to utilize webOS in appliances and car products, with plans of then moving further into health, home security, child, pet monitoring and retail sectors.

With more devices becoming connected devices, cars and homes becoming more like computer extensions, we can expect to see new ways of data being leveraged to give businesses and consumers the information they need.