Google.org is now developing plug-in hybrid vehicles. In the
RechargeIT initiative, a 11 million USD programme, Google is retrofitting Toyota Priuses and Ford Escape Hybrids into plug-in hybrids whose batteries can be charged through a regular socket. They announced the initiative on June 18 and unveiled the first of their plug-in fleet at the parking lot of the Silicon Valley HQ. They have a plan to build 100 of these plug-ins to be rented to their employees! The reason car manufacturers think that hybrid technology has a brighter future than the plug-in is that you will still have to burn coal or polute the environment one way or another in order to get the electricity to charge those vehicles. You polute the environment either directly or indirectly. For Google, however, they try to avoid this by charging the plug-ins with solar energy. On June 18 event, they also turned on their 1.6-megawatt solar-system, the biggest in the US providing about third of the power used at the HQ.
According to their website, the immediate goals of this initiative are:
1. Recharge a Car
2. Recharge the Grid
3. Recharge the Planet
About Google.org:
We hope that someday this institution will eclipse Google itself in overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems.
Sergey Brin & Larry Page
