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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.'"
... every Google Car will have Google Maps built in ... complete with Google ads based on your GPS derived location.
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.
I think it'd make more sense to use the money as a bounty for advances in hybrid cars than to throw it around, the same way the x-prize does. It saves you the difficulty of efficient capital allocation.
\u262D = \u5350
* The advanced hybrid vehicle research center at University of California-Davis (founded and directed by CalCars advisor Prof. Andy Frank) has converted nine sedans and SUVs into PHEVs that have repeatedly won prizes in US Energy Department-sponsored "FutureTruck" competitions. Dr. Frank, widely known as the "Father of the Plug-In Hybrid," has been working on PHEVs for thirty years, and building them with students for more than a decade.
* CalCars produced the world's first plug-in Prius (the PRIUS+) in 2004. Since then a number of companies have emerged to offer conversions for sale to consumers and fleet buyers, and CalCars has worked to support a growing open-source conversion movement.
* In 2003-04, the US Marine Corps demonstrated a diesel-electric PHEV-20 HUMVEE. (The military likes the silent, zero-heat "footprint" in all-electric mode, and appreciates saving fuel that can cost well over $100/gallon to deliver to front lines.) This advanced Shadow RST-V (Reconnaissance, Surveillance and Targetting Vehicle PHEV, built by General Dynamics, uses lightweight lithium-ion batteries and motors in four wheel hubs. See details and photos and more descriptions.
* Long Island, NY has converted a city bus to a plug in hybrid with 40 miles of all-electric range. Many more heavy-duty vehicle conversions (including three recycling dump-trucks that will run in "silent" mode for pickups) are in progress. see here
How we know is more important than what we know.
If Microsoft copies this endeavor we can all start up the "if Microsoft made cars" jokes again. Here's hoping!
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
Mmm, diesel hybrids.....
Aside from the battery issues, what is wrong with hybrids? AFAIK they're not particularly slow, ineffeicient (diesel hybrids can be pretty darn efficient), OR thirsty. I mean the whole POINT of them is that they are efficient (for city driving at least).
They're "complex" mostly because they're new and most mechanics don't know how to work on them. The idea is to get more out there and standardize them and make them less novel.
How are hybrids and evolutionary dead end if electric cars will eventually be the future? Hybrids will drive battery development, electric motor development, etc. Seems like a natural step to me. Where do you get off calling it a dead end.
Sticking with a purely combustion drive train the dead end.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Hybrids are not a dead end. They are the equilibrium waiting to be punctured.
Or, in less metaphorical terms, they are the bridging technology that makes the transition to electics possible when the battery technology improves. When the first really economical, environmentally reasonable battery comes along, it will face the chicken-and-egg problem of cars first or charging stations first. Hybrids wiil solve that.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
That doesn't make any sense at all. It makes so little sense, I can't even think of an analogy close enough to what they said to properly mock them.
Which forces me to ask why "companies that manage the flow of information are well placed to handle that task"?
You'd think that the power companies, at most, would need to update their billing software. WTF does managing the flow of information have to do with a $1 million grant? Am I missing something else?
As an aside, one of the continuing problems with electric vehicles is battery temperature.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
They are just as efficient as non-hybrids.
Hybrids are more efficient. Non hybrids have no way of recapturing the kinetic energy of the vehicle. Hybrids can capture and store that energy for use later. Also, a car that is cruising on the highway that only needs 30 hp to maintain speed could get that from an electric motor. If you were to run the car off electric only, then switch to gasoline-engine only (and recharging what was used when running on electric) and repeating, you would get better mileage than just cruising on gasoline (also note, this would not be effective at saving energy for a diesel car). Another thing about hybrids is that they generally size the engine and motor to match an equivalent gasoline only offering. That is, the gasoline engine is sized smaller, but the total available power is the same. That results in increased efficiency. And yes, I know there are ones like the Accord where the hybrid offers better acceleration than any other offering, but those are not the highest sellers, nor what people think of with hybrids. But even then, they are more efficient than if there were an offering with a just petrol engine which matched the acceleration.
Add to that the plug-in hybrids (which could spend much of their lives as if they are electric-only), and you have some very efficient choices.
Learn to love Alaska
"They are just as efficient as non-hybrids."
Non-hybrids have about a century of refinement behind their current performance.
Getting hybrids into the production stream can pave the way for better hybrids, gradually reducing the need to run the internal combustion engine for support. Until energy storage tech improves, the gas engine "crutch" is among reasonable workarounds.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I recommend you get a license to sell real estate
:(){
Overall, Biofuels are a mistake. About the only place that I see them of use is in the algae's ability to accumulate a LOT of CO2. But if we move from fuels in the first place, we will almost certainly move to electric cars. That means that we will have the ability to manage the pollution at single sources rather than multiple points.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.).
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=ev1&start=0&ie=u tf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official
Seems to me the oil companies are just making sure we keep using oil and make sure no competing infrastructure exists to provide vehicles with energy.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Google has reduced the energy consumption at its giant data centers by more than 50 percent compared with "standard" data centers, using evaporative cooling for its servers and other means, said Urs Hoelzle, a senior vice president of operations. At the same time, he admitted, Google is growing so fast that its energy consumption each year is actually increasing. Funding hybrid development is apparently one of their "carbon neutral" endeavors.
To achieve a goal of getting to 10% of PV power in one year, you'd need to put in 10% * 10 = 100% of current electrical power. That would require first doubling existing electrical generation capacity. Even a 2% PV goal requires 20% of current generation capacity which is still way too high (and 2% per year is hardly going to make any significant inroads - it would not even address growth).
Clearly PV will only ever work with a huge mindshift that goes away from curent silicon-based strategies to a new silicon-based strategy, or radically different strategy, with a far better payback. There are alternatives, but they lack funding and support eg. http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/2007/Press_Releases /04-04-07.html This is not the only such different approach - there have been quite a few through the years.
The major labs are still focussed on silicon and high performance and fighting over conversion efficiency rather than $/W which is the important measurement for general usage. Until $/W is targetted as a primaray goal, these technologies will get nowhere useful.
Perhaps it is telling that many major oil companies (BP, Shell and others), with a vested interest in preserving the status quo, are directing a significant portion of the industry research.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Renewable energy, unlike coal or nuclear, will likely come from thousands or tens of thousands of different locations.
That's great and all, and I'm all in favor of utilizing the zillions of acres of rooftop in the US and around the world to accommodate solar cells. But if you're going to move the automobile infrastructure to electricity and away from petroleum, you're going to have to build more nuclear power plants.
Nice gesture, but can we ditch the fossil fuel dependancy? I can already blow up at the gas pump when Bill Dumbass is smoking next to me or leaving the engine running. Hydrogen cant be much worse.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Google is doing this simply because they can not lose and may gain big. This is not going to change anything else that they are doing.
The article is very long on fluff and does not give up a lot of details which makes it very hard to read between the lines or even to read much into the article. This is not something that aligns itself with Google's "core business" so one must ask why is Google doing this?
Almost everyone will agree that the folks at Google are smart. Frankly they have not comitted a lot of money. It could be that they are just funding this for the goodwill (and publicity) that they will gain. From the amount of money that they have pledged, this could be the only reason. Aligning yourself with an energy issue that everyone cares about is worth a million or even ten million to a company with the reach (and pocketbook) of a company like Google. Google is certainly doing "no evil" with this.
Going back to the part where I said the folks at Google are smart makes me think that this may be something a bit more. Something that they can justify simply for the goodwill and publicity that the effort generates but can maybe give them something more. It seems like this is how they almost always work. In this light, I am wondering if this is a "testing of the water" of the energy venture capital business. Low risk (with billions in available cash one or ten million is not a big wager) with huge potential rewards if the smart folks at Google pick the right project(s) to fund.
The smart people at Google come from a wide range of sciences and specialties. If you put the right people together to review the requests for funding, they stand a fair to middlin chance of picking the right one(s).
Google is indeed smart.
Manufacturing the batteries and disposing of them when they wear out after five years or so is an ecological nightmare. Hardly... at least insofar as the Prius is concerned. Its batteries are recyclable, and NiMH isn't toxic or dangerous like lead-acid or lithium anyway. Furthermore, the batteries should last the life of the vehicle; testing showed no measurable degradation after 150,000 miles.
First, google and everybody is focused on doing cars. That is a HUGE mistake. Cars are subject to a load of regulations. Worse, you have to deal with styling, specs and all the interior/exterior. The right way to start this, is to fire up a company doing hybrid Trucks. In particular, just the frame, cab, motor(s), and a serial generator/ICE that is in one component. The frame should have multiple sizes that match many of today's trucks. From there, they should make it available as stripped or as a simple panel truck. What will happen is that all the bus manufacturers, Panel trucks, delivery trucks, even mail trucks will port their stuff over to it. Once the company is up and running AND they have a name, then switch up to doing Automobiles. One of the most important things here is to develop the name and the manufactuers line. Later, as battery or even better yet, capacitor tech improves, the generator/ICE can be pulled in one piece, and the new energy carrier put in.
But yeah, Google doeas continue to show innovation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
because cars are a necessary evil and yet there are some of us who would like to lessen the impact of the cars we need to use.
Yes and No. Most people can get away with one car and a bicycle or velomobile for their daily short commutes. adding electric assist would greatly improve your distance. Every wingle other country on the planet has more bikes on the roads than cars.
Americans are just too lazy and fat. They would rather drive 2 blocks to get ice cream instead of riding a bike or god forbid... walk there.
Cars ARE a necessary evil for trips over 10 miles. and even then I guarentee I can find at least 1000 people that will disagree with that and mention that public transit like busses and trains will get you there.
But I'm like you, I cant stand sitting next to some icky poor person or not look like I'm rich by pulling into work in my Mercedes.
so I ride in to work on a $4500.00 recumbent. I'm hoping to buy a velomobile by the end of this summer for all weather commuting (yes even winter) simply with the money I am saving on Heath club membership, gas and insurance.
Side benefit, I stay in way better shape than everyone else, my cost to commute is zero, and I get to be even more smug than the prius drivers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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
I think one of the biggest issues with electric cars and plug-in hybrids is not battery life, but charge time. Right now, Tesla has a car that goes 200 miles on a charge at freeway speeds. The problem is that it takes several hours to charge it. When it takes hours to charge a car, then range is a problem. If you could charge a car in minutes, then a slightly reduced range is less of an issue.
One manufacturer (ZAP) is claiming their new ZAP-X car, based on a Lotus chassis, can get 350 miles with a charge time of 10 minutes using new nanotechnology batteries. Aerovironment (designers of the EV-1) has independently tested these batteries and claim they deliver as promised. But who knows, it could still be hype.
If Google can focus their attention on reducing charge times, then a lot of the problems associated with electric cars go away.
There is one very sever problem with doing trucks first; trucks actually have to be economical. You can sell a consumer a car that costs more over life of the vehicle on warm thoughts and green trendiness. For a truck, you will have absolutely no such luck. Trucking companies run on thin margins and will demand economics above all else. Further, trucks are the hardest of all possible problems to solve. Namely, a truck demands extreme range and extreme power. The range issue in particular is very hard problem for 'green' cars to solve.
Cars are (relatively) low hanging fruit. You still need range, but in truth, if you can offer a car that for the first 40 miles runs off the grid and then switches over to gas, you have just made a car that will spend 95% of its time on the grid and make a dent in the problem. For a 'first 40 miles is on the grid' truck on the other hand doesn't even begin to touch the problem nor entice any trucking companies to buy your product.
I am not suggesting that shipping is not a major environmental problem. It is. That said, it is a problem that is much farther out of reach then the issue of personal transportation. To fix shipping, it is going to take a major technological breakthrough that really is not yet on the horizon. Cars on the other hand can be tackled with the tools of today and have a significant environmental impact.
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.