Google.org, a For-Profit Charity

Google has set up a subsidiary, Google.org, a for-profit philanthropy with initial capital of a billion dollars. Not being organized on a tax-free basis carries both advantages and drawbacks. From the article: "Unlike most charities, this one will be for-profit, allowing it to fund start-up companies, form partnerships with venture capitalists and even lobby Congress. It will also pay taxes." One of Google.org's first projects is the development of a plug-in hybrid vehicle that achieves a mileage rating equivalent to 100 MPG.

Comments

Non-registration link

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a link to the same story that doesn't require registration

http://news.com.com/Googles+unusual+approach+to+ph ilanthropy/2100-1014_3-6115533.html

Odd.

[Tavor]

Odd that Google would take a for-profit route, considering how many "non-profits" lobby congress. (I use that term loosely, because of certian Telco and Music NPOs.) Granted, I would LOVE to see Google.org create a better Hybrid, counter the Telcos at their own game, and hopefully devolop a Nationwide Broadband/Fiber Initiative.

Re:Odd.

[BacOs]

Odd that Google would take a for-profit route

I don't find it odd at all. I'm involved with several FLOSS projects and one of them recently researched starting its own foundation (non-profit) or corporation (for profit). Everyone I talked to (including people associated with the Mozilla Foundation and the Python and Apache Software Foundations) recommended starting a for profit corporation. The restrictions placed on federally tax exempt (501(c)(3)) organizations was too great in their opinion. With a for profit corporation, you have much fewer restrictions.

Re:Odd.

[argoff]

The truth is that most people need is the power to help themselves, not aid. For example, if a person in LA went down to the store, bought and cooked up some hot-dogs, and then sold them on the street corner - he would likely be in jail, taxed, and fined over 40K before the night was out - and then be forced to get permits and inspections at great expense to himself. I'm sorry, no argument about government protecting people can justify that kind of behavior.

In Africa, a large amount of US aid was used to build a milk plant. But it was not near any cows or roads, and ended up shutting down. Those kinds of mistakes are much more rare in the private sector, because there is accountabillity and control. Many aid loans were blown by corrupt leaders, who then left it to the citizens to pay back.

In many countries, investors are more than happy to build factories, roads, mines, infrastructure, and the jobs that go with them. But not if government officials demand bribes, permits, taxes, and high fees at every step of the process, and not if they demand high fees on everything imported and exported, and not if the judiciary is so corrupt or slow that they have no recource if land or other items are taken from them. If you had 100 million dollars, would you put it in Venesuela or North Korea right now? People who have paid a bitter price. That's a lot of money, and then they wonder why they have employment problems.

In China, millions of people died from hunger until the farmers were able to have property rights, then the problem disapeared and the economy started to boom. Really, who would slave away on a farm where they own none of the take and none of the land. Once again, the people in China didn't need charity nor help from the government, what they needed was property rights. Charity would have prolonged the problem and made it worse. What they needed was the power to help themselves, once they got it then the poverty problems took care of themselves naturally.

Re:Odd.

[drDugan]

Those restrictions are there for a reason. I agree they are sometimes onerous. However, they make it so that the organization actually must do charitable things, and they make impossible to do the "screw everyone and take the money" things.

Re:Odd.

[UbuntuDupe]

For comparison, I remember a while ago hearing about No Sweat Apparel, another charity-like organization that tries to replace current clothing production with (supposely) that produced under non-exploitative conditions. They explain here why they want to be for-profit -- access to more capital, rewards for those who risked a lot, and to promote a viable industry model.

(Of course, they do use child labor for their advertising, so take it for what it's worth...)

Re:Odd.

[xappax]

it was not near any cows or roads, and ended up shutting down. Those kinds of mistakes are much more rare in the private sector, because there is accountabillity and control.

Ever heard of the Bhopal disaster? It was one of the most deadly industrial accidents ever, and it was due to the negligence of Union Carbide employees (a US corporation). How about the Exxon Valdez? Yet another vast catastrophe caused by irresponsible employees of a US corporation. Or hey, a little closer to geek-home - how about when MasterCard allowed 40 million credit card numbers to be stolen (the largest such leak ever reported) due to poor software design?

The funny thing about these incidents of corporate irresponsibility is that not only did these companies have totally stupid policies that were very likely to result in danger, once disaster struck they were totally unaccountable for the damage they caused.

It would be moronic to claim that the government knows best, or that massive bureaucracy is an effective way to make decisions, but this song and dance about how profit-driven instutitions magically become the most efficient and responsible is absurd.

In many countries, investors are more than happy to build factories, roads, mines, infrastructure, and the jobs that go with them.

Yes, those factories are often sweatshops. Those roads often damage delicate environment which is needed for eco-tourism, scientific research, or agriculture. Those mines can be unregulated death-traps for miners in addition to causing toxic runoff pollution of local water supplies. None of these problems concern the investor, just the local population. In short, the "infrastructure" eagerly pushed by foriegn investors really isn't infrastructure for the improvement of the country or it's people so much as infrastructure for the improvement of the investor's bottom line. Sure, some officials are just corrupt fucks, but has it ever occured to you that there might be good reasons to try to restrict, regulate, and/or tax foreign companies trying to exploit your sovereign nation?

I agree with the sentiment that people need to be given the freedom to take care of themselves, but I don't think that empowering and depending on exploitive investors and multinational conglomerates is the way to give people that freedom.

Re:Odd.

[rs79]

"Those restrictions are there for a reason. I agree they are sometimes onerous. However, they make it so that the organization actually must do charitable things, and they make impossible to do the "screw everyone and take the money" things."

A one word rebuttal: ICANN.

Re:Odd.

[spun]

Quoted directly from Union Carbide's statement, "The Bhopal plant was owned and operated by Union Carbide India, Limited (UCIL), an Indian company in which Union Carbide Corporation held just over half the stock. The other stockholders included Indian financial institutions and thousands of private investors in India."

No mention of government ownership, and a clear statement that UCC owned over half the stock. The site makes no mention of government mismanagement, instead claiming intentional sabotage. If UCC is willing to make a claim that patently ridiculous, don't you think they would have mentioned other factors mitigating their culpability, such as government mismanagement?

Recent documents, obtained through discovery in the course of a lawsuit against Union Carbide for environmental contamination before a New York Federal District Court revealed that Carbide had exported "untested, unproven technology" to the Indian plant. That is partly why the US sister plant did not fail. Also, unlike the US plant, no disaster plans had been prepared for the Bhopal plant. Reports issued months before the incident by scientists within the Union Carbide corporation warned of the possibility of an accident almost identical to that which occurred in Bhopal . The reports were ignored outright and never made it to senior staff .

Due to falling sales, staff had been laid off and safety checks became less and less frequent. Slip-bind plates that prevent water from pipes being cleaned leaking into the MIC tanks via faulty valves were not installed. Their installation had not been included on the cleaning checklist. At the time of the event, the MIC tank refrigeration unit was disabled to save money, and some of its coolant was being used elsewhere. A simple press of a button in the control room would have activated it to at least use the remaining coolant, but this was overlooked by staff.

The gas scrubber was placed on standby, and therefore did not attempt to clean escaping gases with sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), which may have brought the concentration down to a safe level. The water curtain that may have reduced the concentration of the gas was only set to ~13 m and did not reach the gas; it was not designed to contain a leak of such magnitude. Though the audible external alarm was activated to warn the residents of Bhopal, it was quickly silenced to avoid causing panic among the residents. Thus, many continued to sleep, unaware of the unfolding drama, and those that had woken assumed any problem had been sorted. The flare tower used to burn off gases before they are allowed to escape into the air was inoperational pending repairs.

The families of the people who died in Bhopal each received about $2,200.

This is all a matter of public record, easy to research online. The BBC has a very good Bhopal resource center for anyone who wishes to learn more about this horrible example of corporate malfeasance. Without proper regulation, corporations behave in completely sociopathic ways.

Do you enjoy lying through your teeth about horrible disasters in order to prop up your failed and murderous ideology? Do you enjoy playing apologist for sociopaths?

Re:Can't wait

[ozmanjusri]

I can't wait to see how Google finds a way to profit from a battered women's shelter.

Well, this IS Slashdot. News for Nerds. Things that batter.

/Me going to hell. What a downer.

Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[rsborg]

I know that Google employees receive a $5000 discount (plus a few other perks that I'm not clear on) on any purchase of a hybrid vehicle that gets 45 mpg (ie, Prius, Insight or Civic Hybrid).

I think one or both of the founders drive a Prius as well, so this would be inline with their vision of what can be done to make the world a better place.

interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I submitted this story (same exact NY time article even) 3 days ago, when it was news.

Anyhow, the term "non-profit" evokes a warm fuzzy feeling that it shouldn't. John D Rockefeller did more to save the whales (via kerosene) than GreenPeace ever will.

Hybrid Vehicles?

[atomicstrawberry]

First we'll have the gCar, and it will cost far more than it's actually worth, but investors will cough up the money anyway. Apple will follow suit with their iCar, which will be made out of translucent white plastic, but will only run certain fuels. After making a suitable amount of money selling their iCar, they will begin to market successively smaller iCars, and charge more to get them in black.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Redmond, Steve Ballmer will be plotting to 'fucking kill' them both. Unfortunately by this stage he'll have put his back out throwing chairs, so he'll instead switch to 'fucking kill'ing them with a motorised chair with wheels, which Microsoft will market it as the Zume.

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[atomicstrawberry]

It's his greatest invention: a chair that throws itself

Re:Hybrid Vehicles?

[atomicstrawberry]

Ever tried to listen to Ogg Vorbis on your iPod?

Innovating

[kbsoftware]

I don't always agree with Google tactics but at least they are innovative. Certainly changing the internet, computers and now looks like cars and beyond. Microsoft which doesn't innovate just buys or steals will have a hard time competing with such a company. Since I don't see Google being any more evil then Microsoft, I have to cheer to Google since like I said at least they are innovating :) Yeah ok I did a crappy job of explaining the message I'm trying to get through.

Re:Innovating

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I don't always agree with Google tactics but at least they are innovative. Certainly changing the internet, computers and now looks like cars and beyond.

On the other hand, one could easily make the criticism that Google has lost focus and are all over the map, doing a lot of things and most them not anywhere near as well as they do web-searching. Perhaps this is a downside of having too much cash - they just don't have enough good ideas and talented people to make efficient use of all that money.

Re:Innovating

[cgenman]

Remember, Google requires their employees to spend one day a week on a pet project. A lot of things like Google Earth and Picasa come from these. Some of these have tremendous data value, like Orkut and Google Desktop. Some, like Picasa, may someday have tremendous data value but don't currently. But they're only hitting 1/5th of the engineer's time.

Valuable Google Assets: Alerts, Blogger, Desktop, Directory (DMOZ), Images, Maps, News, Toolbar, Web Search, Gmail, Mobile, SMS
Could be Valuable: Book Search, Catalogs, Checkout, Finance, Froogle, Local, Scholar, Video, Calendar, Groups, Talk, Translate
Silly, fun, useless to them: Earth, Picasa, SketchUp,

In the labs: Google Trends, Music Trends, Visually Impaired Search, Notebook, Mars, Page Creator, Public Transportation Maps, RSS Reader, Web Accelerator, Taxi Finder, Suggest, Froogle Mobile, Sets.

With the possible exception of Mars, that seems pretty interconnected. Some of the silliest ideas, like Google Maps, gMail, the Google Toolbar, etc have become standard usage now. Even the silly ones, like Google Earth, were part of their push to create 3D maps of all major US cities, which would have been a valuable resource if they could have pulled it off.

They're like the Bell Labs of the 'net. Lot of pure research, some of which is or might be stupidly profitable. But we'll all reap rewards in the end.

Like Omidyar Network?

[otisg]

I hope it turns out as good as it blurb makes it sound. I believe Pierre Omidyar's Omidyar Network was founded with the same/similar goals in mind.

Beyond "don't be evil"

[timboc007]

I'm glad to see that Google is going beyond their "Don't be evil" motto to "Be good". I applaud their apparent sense of social responsibility.

I believe that much good can be achieved by large corporations who are willing to contribute to making the world a better place - whether it be through science for science's sake (e.g. Bell labs), welfare, world aid or whatever. I will be interested to see how this translates into a "for-profit" environment... presumably their profit margin expectations will not be as high as they might otherwise be?

Re:Beyond "don't be evil"

[anti-drew]

presumably their profit margin expectations will not be as high as they might otherwise be?

Their profit margin expectations may well be nil. It's merely that they are *allowed* to make a profit, not that they necessarily *will*.

Re:Wow, the evil begins

[spoco2]

"And the largest disadvantage to a "for-profit charity?" Your donations are NOT tax deductible.

They've slit their own throats on this one."

Yeah, the people behind Google, the most successful web venture in the world, didn't give any thought at all as to the consequences of making it a for profit charity.

Have you perhaps thought that they are targetting other methods of funding that don't rely as much on the tax deduction angle? How about that they are planning on making products that can make money and therefore self fund the charity?

I highly applaud them, and I think the lack of needing to be non profit could be very liberating and free them up to do many things they otherwise may have not been able to.

Very excited to watch this one!

Plug-in means 100% electric if u don't drive much

[A*OnYourA**]

One of Google.org's first projects is the development of a plug-in hybrid vehicle that achieves a mileage rating equivalent to 100 MPG.

After seeing the movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car' I was so angry I swore I would never buy another car that doesn't run on electricity. Hopefully Google is going to save my ass so I don't have build it.

I Love Google.

Re:Well it has to suceed

[zobier]

The new director of Google.org is Larry Brilliant!

That's Dr. Brilliant.
I'm just waiting for Capt. Obvious to join the conversation.

Re:Wow, the evil begins

[larry bagina]

And the largest disadvantage to a "for-profit charity?" Your donations are NOT tax deductible.

You and I aren't going to be donating money, google.com is ($1 billion in seed money). Since google.org is a child company of google.com, their accountants and lawyers can futz with it to minimize any tax implications.

Hindu guru

[Psychotria]

From the article: (Brilliant)... has studied under a Hindu guru in a monastery at the foothills of the Himalayas

Anybody who can study with a guru sitting on them has my respect

Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[larry bagina]

Actually, their founders use this, which gets 0.3 mpg.

Re:equivelent MPG

[Anonymous Coward]

A common system for evaluating advanced technology vehicle energy sources (hybrids, fuel cells, etc.) uses the "GREET" model developed by Argonne National Labs. This model considers the 'well-to-wheels' efficiency, which gives the most accurate picture of how a particular fuel or energy source is used. In the end, you get a measurement of miles per equivalent gallon of gasoline, or MPEGG.

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/software/GREET/i ndex.html

MPG?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought DivX was the norm these days

Same way they profit from everything else:

[mcc]

Targeted advertising.

Re:equivelent MPG

[Mr Z]

So far, I've seen two main methods of computing the fuel economy of a hybrid. The silliest one is the EPA method, which simply measures emissions and plugs them into a government mandated formula. This works for most traditional cars, but for hybrids it tends to overstate the fuel economy. The other accounts for the amount of gasoline and electricity from the grid used to power the vehicle. If you never plug your vehicle into an outlet, this is equivalent to dividing travel distance by number of gallons of gasoline. If you do plug your car in at night, it gets harder to calculate, since we don't typically burn gasoline to create electricity on the grid.

About the best you can do is compare emissions equivalence. Electric motors are zero-emissions at the point of use, but the coal plant on the edge of town will belch a little more if you're drawing from the grid. To find a useful ratio, you have to make assumptions about the particular mix of energy sources providing electricity to your home: Coal, natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, etc. For specific regions that's doable, but for a nationwide scale you have to work with averages.

Given how cheap electricity is compared to many things, I suppose most people will just look at what they're paying at the pump, though.

--Joe

Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[caitsith01]

...this development, along with the Bill and Melinda foundation, means we now have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should be doing.

If they're promoting cleaner vehicles or saving kittens it's all fine and dandy. But what about accountability? What if Google, with its billions, starts doing things that some of us strongly disagree with? Would Christian conservatives be happy if Google started a campaign to push condoms in schools and third world countries to help stop AIDS? Would progressives be happy if Google started a campaign to restore family values through aggressively marketing church youth groups?

Let's remember that this is the same Google which is arguably supporting the tyrannical Chinese government's censorship. Fundamentally, we should be asking, what is Google's agenda? What if we disagree with it?

I expect many people will be inclined to give me responses about it being an example of a company doing what it wants in a free market, and that it is still bound by the law. However, I say, TANSTAAFL, and I prefer my social engineering to be done by the government because in principle at least the government represents me and my interests, whatever my financial involvement.* Are we looking at a future where democracy is contingent on share ownership?

* yeah yeah, spare me

Google seems a bit like Apple around here at times, perhaps a little too far above reasonable criticism. A great many people seem to ignore the fact that it is a self-interested entity in a competitive market, and at the end of the day what it values is what's good for Google and not the good of all mankind. Even if you think this is great, I urge you to think about whether it's really a positive thing to have one company exerting so much influence over the information we receive (google.com), knowing so much about what we are interested in (google.com), what we talk about (gmail), where we go (google maps/earth), what we buy (Adwords, froogle), what we are creating (the emerging word processing software and related tools, Picasa), and apparently now, how we operate as a society.

Put it this way - if Google's board turned rabid tomorrow, how much damage could it do?

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[bishiraver]

Google.org does not blowback money to google.com, the search engine company.

The government should do a few main things:

-make sure other people don't take my stuff, my life, or impose upon my life in a negative way.
-protect my life and the sovereignty of my country.
-make sure its populace is well-educated and healthy
-deal with the people who cross the above two in a just manner.

In doing the above in a farsighted manner, it will maintain a good quality of life through protecting our nature reserves (if we don't have nature reserves, then arguably a future generation may indeed have a lower quality of life, lack of knowledge, and a higher death rate. Education and health may well be an extrapolation of 'protect my life.'

Of course, to do all of that a huge network of laws is written, several branches of government are created, and everything gets bogged down in beaurocracy - especially if morals are the key focus of politicians.

Google's involvement with the chinese government is actually a far cry better than any other search engine - when pages are censored, it tells the user that there were results that were censored. In a devious way, it does more to increase the knowledge of government censorship in China better than showing everything.

Google is doing things with google.org that a government shouldn't have to do. And you've seen what kind of bumbling the beaurocracy does when this kind of thing is involved.

Because google's company is knowledge based, it is not beholden to the same types of shareholders as, say, an oil company. This is well shown by their work on a hybrid-electric car. And because it has shareholders, instead of throwing money at problems like poor food and water quality in developing countries, it will work to fix the causitive issues. And with the brilliant minds they have there, I have no doubt this will be extremely successful.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[catbutt]

I have a hard time seeing how a corporation doing things with the intent of making a positive change is likely to cause more harm than a corporation doing things only for the purpose of enriching its shareholders.

Re:Before the Google love-in gets out of hand

[Anonymous Coward]

"...this development, along with the Bill and Melinda foundation, means we now have extremely large, extremely rich companies doing what our governments should be doing."

Actually, you have it completely backwards. This is exactly what private groups should do and the government should not.

But I believe we have a first principal mismatch. You want the government to do everything and do not trust the individual. I on the other hand don't want to the government doing anything and I trust the individual.

It reminds me of a conversation with a friend. He was going on and on about how he wished the government would tax him more so that the government could do good and give his money to those in need. Sadly, it never crossed his mind to give to private cherity. He, like you, worships government.

See, by having the freedom to choose which charities to give money to you can give to causes that you support. You are not forced to give to causes that the government forces you to give to under threat of imprisonment. Maybe you don't like the military, abortion, or perhaps welfare. The government doesn't give you a choice.

Why don't people know what true liberty is?

"Put it this way - if Google's board turned rabid tomorrow, how much damage could it do?"

Ask that about government. Government has a military and secret police forces.

Re:Plug-in is inline with Google's existing vision

[dago]

Well, to be even more complete, one could also say that traditionnal car manufacturers already have diesel cars that go under 4 l/100km (over 58 mpg). Volkwagen already sold cars that could go down to 3 l/100km (or over 78 mpg).

Ok, that's not in the US, and you still need particle filters, but still, I also think that limiting the options is a bad idea.

Re:Isnt "for profit charity" an oxymoron?

[__aaclcg7560]

Sounds like Google pretending to be a for-profit charity when it really should be an investment bank. As soon as people's heads stop exploding over the concept of a for-profit charity, I'm sure the financial paperwork will be picked over most throughly.

One billion dollars for FOSS

[wysiwia]

Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS? Can you imagine a world where any standard software is free of charge for any kind of computer. Can you imagine a world where even specialised software doesn't cost more a $100? Can you picture how one billion dollars could change the world if spent for FOSS?

O. Wyss

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine what one billion dollars would achieve if spent for FOSS?

25 clones of Tetris
24 C standard libraries
23 stupid desktop widgets
22 pointless window managers
21 HTTP servers
20 Wiki web applications
19 useless shells
18 password crackers
17... Eh, you get the point: Take Freshmeat's frontpage and extrapolate, and that's at best! What you'd probably get is a bunch of people demanding 55 grand a year to work on utterly useless crap.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[Christianfreak]

I certainly hope that specialized software doesn't cost just $100 because then there would be no reason for people like me to develop it (since that's what my company does). I love FOSS but face it, there simply isn't a FOSS solution for everything. FOSS is great for commodity software like operating systems and office suites but not so great for specialized things. FOSS is about scratching an itch or becoming popular. Developing specialized software HAS to be about listening to the (few) "customers". As a business owner, I'm certainly not going to waste time with a half solution for anything because in the long run it costs me more money than if I had just developed (or paid to have developed) the real solution I need. That's almost always going to cost me more than $100. I think most businesses are going to be pretty similar in that regard.

Fortunately I don't think any huge influx of money is going to cause masses of people to switch. There is likely more than $1bn collectively in FOSS already and it hasn't really made much difference.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[LunarCrisis]

Barring the possibility of failed sarcasm. . .

That's why they would be careful with exactly who they accept, just like they do with their Summer of Code.

Re:One billion dollars for FOSS

[Eivind Eklund]

As an OSS developer, I can say that 1 billion dollar would make fairly little difference, and might make a negative difference. People seem to believe that open source software would be tremendously helped by money. I've worked with a very large open source project (FreeBSD), and have seen how we fairly often have had problems with spending money. Anyway, before, we had the problem of vetting the people that worked on things. We tried just hiring people to do a project for us a few times, and got so-so results in many of the cases. Fortunately, we also had a lot of people that worked as consultants and did FreeBSD stuff in their spare time. So we tried paying one of those to spend more of his time on FreeBSD.

Oops. Bad plan. We got a time disparity: He had lots of time for FreeBSD, and the volunteers didn't have time to catch up...

We seem to have learned a bunch about how to spend money since - there's been pushed some amounts of money through the project (many scales down from a billion dollars, though) and it doesn't seem to mess thing up. However, we spent years learning how to do that, and there's still clear limits on how much money we would be able to spend positively. I suspect Google understands this. Through their Summer of Code projects they seem to be pushing about the right amount of money that open source can gracefully accept. Pushing another billion dollar into the open source economy in a sudden fashion would in my opinion most likely destroy large parts of the Open Source world.

Eivind.

My car will get negative 100Mpg

[goombah99]

I'm developing a car that will get negative 100MPG to cancel this out.

Actually I'm trying to cancel out this goofy definition of MPG when there's electricity involved. Does a pure electric car get Infinity Miles per gallon?

This sort of reminds me of a prank a friend pulled in college. One guy was always entering the room to announce he had managed to drive is economy car so skillfully that got outrageous gas milage. Tiring of this, my friend started adding a gallon of gas to the braggarts tank every night so that his milage and brags got bigger and bigger. Then the next week he started siphoning out a gallon out of the tank. The brags "mysteriously" ceased without explanation.

So my car is going to use photovoltaics, and have an onboard device that inhales smog, and uses the electricity to produce gasoline. Then I'm going to drive up to gas stations, connect the hose and pump gas back into the filling station tanks. That will mess with their arithmetic! and I'll have my negative 100MPG vehicle.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[fo0bar]

Actually I'm trying to cancel out this goofy definition of MPG when there's electricity involved. Does a pure electric car get Infinity Miles per gallon?

Yes, it does, considering there is no gas involved.

I don't understand what you think is "goofy" about this. I put 10 gallons of gas into my Prius, I get 500 miles out of those 10 gallons. Hence, 50MPG. The fact that there is an electrical aspect is irrelevant.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[MadUndergrad]

The hybrid still gets all its power from the gasoline. When you start plugging it into the wall (as is the case with these "100MPG hybrids") it stops being entirely a question of efficiency and starts becoming one of battery capacity. That's why the definition in this case is goofy.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[ColaMan]

He's talking about the plug-in hybrids... I suppose you could convert the cost of the electricity into how much gas that would buy and go from there.

eg: You use $1.20 of electricity to charge your electric-only car up. Gas costs $2.40/gal. You have bought the equivalent of 1/2 gal of gas. You drive 100 miles before recharging, thus you've reached the equivalent of 200MPG.

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[14CharUsername]

Wouldn't it be easier to get -100MPG by driving around in reverse?

Re:My car will get negative 100Mpg

[Twinbee]

Perhaps this is why we should simply change the system to miles per dollar. This would cover any technology, past and present.

Re:equivelent MPG

[AudioFile]

Let's not re-invent the wheel here - the GREET model (referenced previously by me, since registered) is the standard for calculating fuel economy for advanced or mixed-fuel vehicles. The problem, which MrZ touched on, is that electricity is tricky to account for and certainly depends on region (though a 'national average' metric exists). The traditional EPA methods MrZ referenced are based on standard US drivecycles that measure the amount of fuel used, and are certainly not relevant for plug-ins or EV's. CARB has been working on this issue, not sure what their current progress is.

In the case of plug-ins, electricity from the grid is the energy *carrier* and not the source. Comparing different carriers (electricity, hydrogen, etc) and different sources (coal, renewable, etc) requires the use of a fuel cycle model, and the GREET model is the popular one right now. Straight conversions on basis of chemical energy or stored on-vehicle electrical capacity don't do the issue justice. If we want to be responsible about our oil dependence and chose fuel efficient vehicles, the 'absolute' model (GREET) should be considered. And it yields some interesting results - primarily that plug-ins are a great solution in the absence of a functioning hydrogen infrastructure.

(To preempt responses from the hydrogen aware, hydrogen is considered a *carrier* and not source by many because, while it does occur naturally, the vast majority of commercial hydrogen currently comes from electrolysis or as byproduct from chemical reactions (refineries, industrial, etc.); we don't mine for it directly. In any case, a fuel cycle model is the best attempt to normalize these different energy pathways for plug-ins.)

For a quick primer on PI-HEVs and the fuel economy issue, take a look at this presentation (slide 9, 10) by Mark Duvall at EPRI which nails the issue on the head. If conflicts between what I said and what this presentation says exist, trust the presentation.

-Bill

Google! Fuck Yeah!

[DaMouse404]

Coming again to save the motherfucking day yeah! -DaMouse

Re:Homework not done and it shows.

[Technician]

FYI, the Prius does not use a Lithium battery.

For long battery life, they do a lot of battery management to make the battery last the life of the car.

For starters they do not treat the battery the same way you would treat a cell phone or laptop battery. Full charge then deep discharge cycles are not done. The battery is rarely charged to 100% and almost never discharged below 50%.

There are Prius cars out there with over 250K miles and still going strong on the original battery. Do some online research on the rate of Prius battery failures. Most battery failures are not the HV traction pack but the 12V cabin battery.

Cell phones and laptops are often charged fully and run down below 50% for long battery run-time. This kills batteries. Cell phone and laptop batteries life is not expected to last more than a couple years. The Prius battery on the other hand is expected to last the life of the car. The plug in mod may change the expected battery life considerably.

No, it is a tax classification

[Shihar]

Basically, if you declare yourself a non-profit company you get your ball shackled by the federal government in return for them not taking taxes. A non-prof has a dramatically restricted ability invest in other companies and needs follow a pile of regulations. They also are limited in whose money they can take, where they can put that money, and how much of it they can move and how much of it they can save.

By declaring themselves a for-profit charity the regulatory burden is dramatically reduced. So, when they declare themselves a 'for profit' charity, they are basically declaring they would rather taxed then live by the regulations that federal government imposes on non-profit charities.

This move does not really surprise me. Google has made itself by being more agile and quicker to adapt then its competitors. If they are going to try something innovative in the world of philanthropy, they are probably going to go for a unique model that doesn't conform well to current non-prof charity regulations.

"DOUBLESPEAK!!1111!!!" for no red tape

[Shihar]

I have founded and run non-profit entities, and guess what - it is hard, even when you have money. Oversight, restrictions, tax headaches, reporting, etc. You have to actually do things that really help the public and not the owners.

You answer your own objections. If you declare yourself a non-prof you run into (by your own words) "oversight, restrictions, tax headaches, reporting, etc." That is clearly what they are trying to avoid. Non-profit is a tax classification. They don't want to be under that classification. They don't want to be forced to spend X% of their donations and be prevented from investing X% into other things. That is what being a non-profit does. The non-profit classification works great for some things and it does make sure that people who declare this tax-exempt status really are doing something. Google has said that they want to try something that doesn't pigeon hole into what the IRS and government regulators think a charity should be spending and investing. If Google wants to avoid following government regulations, then they MUST declare their charity a for-profit charity and pay taxes.

Besides, what is the worst that can happen? Google makes some investments that you disagree with? If that keeps you from sleeping at night don't take a walk down Wall Street or else your head will explode. Even if it is an utter failure it just means that there is one more investment firm investing in things I disagree with. At best, Google breaks out of the mold of charities, does something innovative, and brings something good to all of our lives. So at worst it is more of the same old, and at best peoples' lives are changed for the better.

Maybe half the reason why corporations can be so tight fisted with giving their money to charity is because every time they try and do something good with it hoping to get an ounce of good will, some jack ass gets up on a soap box and starts screaming into the wind about the evil corporations donating to fight hunger so that they have more orphan babies to eat. Maybe you should save your soap box for when they actually do something wrong.

Re:Well it has to suceed

[grammar fascist]

Well, we haven't had to wait long for Mr. Pithy Rejoinder, have we?

Simpler way to measure it!

[Rockgod]

You could do all that or just measure the costs incurred maintaining that vehicle in terms of $/mile or miles/$. This makes details of the fuel used irrelevant. This way most economic car would be the one that gives more miles per buck. And yeah we could keep all the pollution norms in place to make sure that the new type of fuel would be easy on environment.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Eivind Eklund]

Well, I'm from Norway - I think we have the highest gasoline price in the world. I just believe it is STILL underpriced, and that the correct thing to do would be to make the price real - in other words, include the cost of cleaning up after negative sides of the gas. Markets are very very good at optimizing, but they have to have the correct input price. The price of a resource isn't the cost of getting it out of the ground - it's the cost of getting it out of the ground plus the cost of cleaning up afterwards.

Re:Simpler way to measure it!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

And even with our absurdly high tax rates on fuel, some political parties are still talking about adding mega-taxes on "highly polluting vehicles" (as in, extra thousands of pounds per year for having one).

The thing is, I used to drive a little 1.2-litre Vauxhall Corsa (1995 model) to work. Now I drive a 2-litre turbo Subaru Impreza WRX (2003 model). The former was significantly more fuel efficient (though as an interesting anecdote, far less fuel efficient than the newer model) and would be in one of the lowest bands for these new "environmental taxes". The latter is deemed a monster, and would be in the highest or second-highest band. And yet in reality, the WRX's emissions aren't much higher than a typical family saloon.

What's really telling is that when I drove the Corsa, I commuted around a 70 mile round-trip per day to get to work. Now I work in the city where I live, and do maybe 1/10 of that. I generate vastly less pollution now than I used to, and most of what I do generate is sitting in artificially generated traffic queues designed by our local bus-mad council to make car driving unappealing and promote bus use. And yet, these proposed "environmental taxes" would penalise me far more today.

If you insist on using the tax system to make some behaviours unpopular (I question the ethicality of this approach in any context, but that's a different matter) and you want to make pollution from cars unpopular, then taxing fuel rather than the type of vehicle makes far more sense.

MOD ABUSE?

[GrumpySimon]

Does the parent post REALLY need a -1 Troll? You might not agree with him, but there's no obvious trolling above, but a well reasoned and polite response.

Plug in hybrid?

[JPriest]

I am a little dissapointed to see Google jumping on the whole plug in hybrid thing, I didn't expect them to buy into the hype too. A "100mpg" equiv plug in hybrid is actually pretty trivial to build. The problem with it is that they are costly to build, there is an _enormous_ amount of red tape (crash test ratings etc.) involved in producing a car. Lastly, nobody wants to spend > $50,000 on a $10,000 car with an electric drive train that needs to be parked for 15 hours to charge after every 200 miles of travel.

way to avoid being labeled a mutal fund by SEC?

[the-pdm]

I wonder if this is a way to avoid being labeled a mutual fund by the SEC. They drew attention from the SEC for investing in projects outside their core business and ascting more like a mutual fund than a company.

This isn't innovation, it's PR.

[xplenumx]

So how is this different from Google simply being a venture capitalist? There are already plenty of venture capital firms who specialize in specifically funding clean technology, disease research, and other 'social good'. While I welcome Google's investment, this 'for profit charity' sounds more like nothing more than a spin-doctoring PR stunt.

Overstatement

[anomaly]

not only did these companies have totally stupid policies that were very likely to result in danger, once disaster struck they were totally unaccountable for the damage they caused.

With all due respect,I believe that you're overstating or over simplifying your case.

The Bhopal disaster was a combination of UCC, Indian government failures and cultural issues. High population density because UCC provided JOBS that paid well, challenges due to differences between American and Indian culture, no infrastructure to support the people (hospitals, sewage treatment, 10K phone lines for 1M+ people, water only a few hours per day, no public transport, so people lived adjacent to the plant) The Indian government turned down offers from UCC to pay for the disaster - because they had an agenda in how the political implications were to be presented and managed.

UCC ponied up $470M for relief for the victims and families. Half a BILLION dollars seems like more than "totally unaccountable."

Exxon paid more than $2.5B to clean up after the oil spill. They paid $1.1B in settlements, and they were fined $5B. On top of that, their image was tarnished to the point that people today still avoid buying gas from them.

Look, I'm no apologist for corporate entities (or government for that matter) but your argument is weakened by your overstatement.

Re:Back that up?

[frdmfghtr]

IMO, this long life is because I always run my handsets, *without any charging at all*, until I get the "low battery" warning, then I place them on the charger for a minimum of 12-16 hours. This cycle of deep discharge / full recharge keeps them at their peak capacity for years.

That's because your cordless phones probably used Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) batteries, which benefit from deep discharge/recharge cycles (aka 'conditioning'.)

Now, regarding NiMH batteries...

Every single piece of advice I have ever heard or read on rechargeable NiMH batteries says that to ensure the longest lifetime of a battery, you should *always* "run it try" then give it a full recharge. It is the incomplete "halfway" charging cycles that give the battery "false memory" and cause the chemicals to not assume their full capacity after the next charge.

The occasional deep discharge/recharge is acceptable, but not every time. From www.greenbatteries.com:

Do NiMH batteries have memory effect?

Technically, NiMH batteries do not have a "memory effect", but strictly speaking neither do NiCds. However NiMH batteries can experience voltage depletion, also called voltage depression, similar to that of NiCd batteries, but the effect is normally less noticeable. To completely eliminate the possibility of NiMH batteries suffering any voltage depletion effect manufacturers recommend an OCCASIONAL, complete discharge of NiMH batteries followed by a full recharge. NiMH batteries can also be damaged by overcharge and improper storage (see the NiCd section immediately above this one). Most users of NiMH batteries don't have to be concerned with this voltage depletion effect. But if you use a device say a flashlight, radio, or digital camera for only a short time every day and then charge the batteries every night, you will need to let the NiMH (or NiCd) batteries run down occasionally.

Note the word "OCCASIONAL."

It appears you are comparing your usage habits of NiCd batteries with the OP's statements about NiMH batteries.

Re:Can't wait

[Ingolfke]

That's easy. Turn them hos out... I mean... find employment opportunities for them in the local community and take a small percentage of their income to cover healthcare, security, and client management.