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Google Spends Money to Jump-Start Hybrid Car Development
slugo writes "Internet search giant Google (GOOG) hopes to speed the development of plug-in hybrid cars by giving away millions of dollars to people and companies that have what appear to be practical ways to get plug-in hybrid automobiles to market faster. 'While many people don't associate Google with energy, analysts say the fit isn't all that unnatural. Renewable energy, unlike coal or nuclear, will likely come from thousands or tens of thousands of different locations. Analysts have long said that one of the big challenges will be managing that flow into and out of the nation's electric grid, and that companies that manage the flow of information are well placed to handle that task.'"
this is the sort of thing they said their philanthropic foundation would invest in. It's really got nothing to do with managing the electric grid flow of information.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
They're slow, inefficient, and thirsty. Manufacturing the batteries and disposing of them when they wear out after five years or so is an ecological nightmare.
Batteries can be r-e-c-y-c-l-e-d.
Football Odds
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
They talked mostly about bring plug-in hybrids to market which is a notable difference from current hybrid cars. Regular hybrid cars don't make a whole lot of sense economically and whether they make sense environmentally is arguable (i.e. does the reduction in emissions make up for the emissions/waste from manufacturing and disposing of the battery packs they use?). Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, are essentially full-on electric cars that also have gasoline engine of some sort in them, so they're really a different beast in many ways.
At current, one of the biggest problems with making a mass-market electric car is that they take too long to charge up. You can easily make an electric car with a range that matches a car with a full tank of gas, but once that power is used up, it takes too long to charge up. Even if you build a car with lithium ion or lithium polymer batteries which charge faster than standard NiMH batteries (and are also more expensive and don't age as well) the charge time is still a decent amount of time. Plug-in hybrids could potentially solve this allowing you to run your car as an electric car for your everyday driving around stuff and then being able to run on gas in situations where you wouldn't want or be able to spend the time to charge up your car. This would provide a way to get electric cars on the road and in wide use without waiting for other technologies to develop (i.e. better batteries, smaller/denser ultracapacitors, hydrogen fuel cells, etc.).
Um, all of the current Hybrids already use NiMH batteries. I don't know why you think they use Lead-Acid. Recycling the batteries would be a problem, but they're designed not to wear out--and empirical evidence suggests that they do a pretty good job of not wearing out, the only people that I've found who replace Prius batteries are the guys who are converting them into plug-in Hybrids and want to get more miles out of them.
I read the internet for the articles.
Adding a plug to an existing Prius costs about $50 in parts. There are people who will do it for $250 or so. The result is a vehicle that you can run in full electric mode for most of your zipping around town.
Clearly, there is something lacking with getting a plugin Prius to market, but it isn't technical.
How we know is more important than what we know.
While primarily composed of cellulose, paper has a number of other organic binding components in a complex composite macro-structure which degrades as part of the recycling process. It is also created from relatively simple, cheap easy-to produce biological source materials (raw wood or hemp fiber). The problem with paper production isn't as much its production as its volume in disposal. The relatively low cost of production of paper is what makes profitable recycling difficult.
In contrast, lithium is a fairly rare and expensive, volatile "metal" and is combined in lithium-ion batteries cathodes with other moderately rare elements from simple raw molecules through chemical and mechanical processes. It is therefore reasonable to expect that the process for recycling lithium-ion batteries would be substantially more productive, lucrative, and worthwhile.
Apples, oranges.
Plastics are somewhere in between the two. They are often created from a finite non-renewable resource (for which cost is increasing, but nowhere near the cost of lithium) but based on moderately long complex molecules using processes which usually aren't easily reversible. So often, like with paper, you can't go back to the source materials you used to create the plastic. Thus, as the price of oil increases through greater scarcity, plastic use will substitute with types or plastics that can be created without oil (and hopefully which also can be broken down more easily), or substitution will occur with other products that can be more cheaply produced or recycled (aluminium, cardboard, tinfoil hats...)
In the long run, the increasing price of oil will be good for the environment, although it will cause a lot of pain on the way as economies adjust to increasing average costs for energy.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Don't get your hopes up; this is a google.org initiative, so I'm not sure they are looking to make money off it.
They're slow, inefficient, and thirsty.
Have you ever driven a hybrid? Mine is plenty fast and gets great gas mileage.
I will say that the current cars are only the start, and the technology will get better with each new generation.
Here is a nice overview of compressed air cars. They are going into production soon.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/659/
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
1. The grid can handle the new load. According to this study, there's currently enough off-peak capacity to run 84% of US cars, light trucks, and SUVs as plug-in hybrids. Of course, it would take years for that many vehicles to be replaced, allowing some lead time to get additional generating capacity installed. 2. The electric companies will not immediately turn to foreign oil to cover the power increase. The utilities have been moving away from oil as fuel for a long time now, even 10 years ago when oil was fairly cheap it still cost more than coal and even natural gas. Currently only 2% of electrical generation comes from oil. I would expect future increases in capacity to continue this trend and come mainly from coal or possibly natural gas. Not necessarily the best choices for the environment, but a modern plant design should include CO2 sequestration and other emission controls to deal with acid rain gases and mercury. 3. The local electric company is competent in some way. Well, you got me on that one! They do, however, have to answer to various public utility commissions and whatnot so there's a dim glimmer of hope.