Slashdot Log In
Google Spends Money to Jump-Start Hybrid Car Development
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jun 19, 2007 06:44 PM
from the to-the-googmobile dept.
from the to-the-googmobile dept.
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This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
I'm betting ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
... every Google Car will have Google Maps built in ... complete with Google ads based on your GPS derived location.
I would actually really like this. Google maps are usually VERY accurate (as opposed to the majority of in-dash navigation systems that I have used), easily updated due to "centralized" location, and come with traffic reports (at least in Phoenix).
I know this is doable with an in-car pc + an evdo card, but something from the OEM would be really great. I would whole-heartedly embrace a partnership between GM and google.
Re:I'm betting ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when MapPoint was the only game in town, Microsoft was still 2 years behind in map updates. Sure, the up-to-date construction information was nice but I'be been stuck in 2 states where there was no road in MapPoint and I had to resort to old school tactics by buying a map.
Parent
Re:I'm betting ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I'm betting ... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'm betting ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I'm betting ... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:I'm betting ... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with trying to improve the world and make a profit at the same time, in fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's just about the best possible thing a proper capitalistic corporation can be doing. Beats the hell out of what most companies do... namely trying to make a buck by screwing over the planet and public.
Parent
Re:I'm betting ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
google.ORG not google.com (Score:5, Informative)
X-Prize (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
PHEV already exist (Score:5, Interesting)
* 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.
Re:PHEV already exist (Score:4, Insightful)
The commercialization of plug-in hybrids is completely dependent on the ability to manufacture what are now top of the line lithium ion batteries for 40-70% less than they currently cost. I believe this is the focus of Google's money. 10 mill isn't going to get you anywhere with fuel cells (which have been 5 years away for 30 years).
Today's hybrids are not going to seriously dent our dependence on oil, plug-in hybrids absolutely could. Unless a major car company announces a release date for a retail plug-in by next year, I'm going to buy or build a Ford Escape plug-in conversion.
Parent
Re:PHEV already exist (Score:5, Informative)
Clearly, there is something lacking with getting a plugin Prius to market, but it isn't technical.
Parent
Oh boy oh boy oh boy!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
How about Red Hat? They make a Linux distribution, so certainly they must be good at distribution. How about Starbucks? They are used to distributing energy to people, so this should translate to hybrid cars. What about McDonalds? They...oh just stfu slugo.
Why does every Slashdot story contributor wander off into his own little world of conjecture? Can't we just stick to the story? If you want to comment on the subject, just put it as a reply. Oh yeah, because no one would see it after it got modded down.
Parent
It's there money but personally I would (Score:3, Insightful)
Better batteries and fuel cells.
an efficient car takes a lot of resources for different parts, so the research money gets spread thin amongst many different technologies.
Relax, it's just an opinion.
Wha? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wha? (Score:4, Funny)
Information = knowledge
Knowledge = Power
Power = Electricity
Therefore: Information = Electricity
Google will become the waterwheel of the 21st century.
Swi
Parent
Another way to save the planet... (Score:5, Funny)
Google-EV1 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [google.com.au]
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.
Re:Google-EV1 (Score:5, Informative)
In contrast, lithium is a fairly rare and expensive, volatile "metal" and is combined in lithium-ion batteries cathodes [nec-tokin.com] 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.
Parent
It's nuketastic (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
why not hydrogen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:why not hydrogen? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Take this seriously for a minute (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Charge time is the issue (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why hybrids? (Score:5, Informative)
Batteries can be r-e-c-y-c-l-e-d.
Parent
Re:Why hybrids? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why hybrids? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/659/ [ecogeek.org]
Parent
Re:Why hybrids? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Parent
Re:Why hybrids? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Why hybrids? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Why hybrids? (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [go-one.us] 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.
Parent
Re:Why hybrids? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Why hybrids? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
Re:Why even bother with Hybrid Cars (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Why even bother with Hybrid Cars (Score:5, Informative)
1. The grid can handle the new load.
Parent
Re:Why even bother with Hybrid Cars (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Why even bother with Hybrid Cars (Score:5, Informative)
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.).
Parent
Solar cells need a lot of work... and politics (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [massey.ac.nz] 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.
Parent
Hopefully not (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Hopefully not (Score:5, Insightful)
For those who like details, A123 batteries kill Tesla's argument that smaller batteries just die faster, and don't save money. Small A123 batteries will last longer than your car, and never need to be replaced. They also have way lower series resistance, and can push one of those tiny 300HP induction motors http://acpropulsion.com/ [acpropulsion.com] with as much current than they can take. There's simply no reason that a modern plug-in Prius couldn't leave a Porche in the dust (ok, accept for those small hard tires, and crummy handling). By plugging into the grid, we give ourselves the freedom to produce energy however makes the most sense, whether solar, hydro, nuclear, gas, wind, or (God forbid) coal, oil sands, and oil shale. And if this sounds like an add for A123, it turns out that they're simply the first to market among many who will shortly sell competing batteries. Google continues to show some real vision!
Parent
However, I have an issue with all this (Score:5, Insightful)
But yeah, Google doeas continue to show innovation.
Parent
The Problem with Trucks (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Hopefully not (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you're being ironic. The US corn industry is the richest bunch of corrupt thieves in the country. They put the RIAA and MPAA to shame. Not only do they get government subsidies so they can undercut the world market price, but their competitors are kept out of the US market by tariffs. Ever wonder why "sugar" is spelled "high fructose corn syrup" these days?
Parent
Re:Google and energy (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent