Posted by Rolf Schreiber, RechargeIT Engineer
Last summer Google.org launched the RechargeIT program, an initiative to accelerate the commercialization of plug-in vehicles. As part of this project, we created the GFleet, a free car-sharing program for Google employees. The GFleet includes a handful of hybrid vehicles converted to plug-ins with a Hymotion conversion module.
Our plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have been on the road for about a year now, and the RechargeIT team has been diligently collecting statistics on their performance. We noticed that employees primarily use our plug-ins for short trips close to our headquarters, so the data weren’t truly representative of typical U.S. driving patterns. We were curious to see how the cars would perform under controlled conditions – and how they would stack up against other conventional automobiles typically found in U.S. households. With that, the RechargeIT Driving Experiment was born!
In total, it took just over seven weeks to complete all the trips in all the vehicles. And with the results in, our plug-ins did great, with the Priuses getting more than 90 miles per gallon. The PHEVs not only greatly outperformed the average American fleet fuel economy of 19.8 MPG, they did significantly better than the standard hybrids – 53% fuel economy improvement for the plug-in Ford Escape and 93% improvement for the plug-in Prius.
Check out our newly improved RechargeIT website for more details on our Driving Experiment.
Posted by David Bercovich, Program Manager, Climate & Energy TeamGoogle welcomes the Solar Taxi today on its trip around the world. The solar-powered vehicle is two-thirds of the way through its trip which will encompass 50,000 kms (over 30,000 mil…
Posted by David Bercovich, Program Manager, Climate & Energy TeamGoogle welcomes the Solar Taxi today on its trip around the world. The solar-powered vehicle is two-thirds of the way through its trip which will encompass 50,000 kms (over 30,000 mil…
Posted by Adam Borelli, Team CoordinatorOn June 11th and 12th Google.org and the Brookings Institution will host a conference on plug-in vehicles in Washington, D.C. We’ll examine their potential to reduce oil dependence and pollution, and the role th…
Posted by Adam Borelli, Team CoordinatorOn June 11th and 12th Google.org and the Brookings Institution will host a conference on plug-in vehicles in Washington, D.C. We’ll examine their potential to reduce oil dependence and pollution, and the role th…
Collecting Car Data – Part 2
Posted by Adam Langley, Alec Proudfoot, Richard Walker, RechargeIT Team Part 1 talked about our datalogging hardware, this time we’ll focus on some of the technical details of the software.The dataloggers contain a 4GB flash card with a minimal Gentoo…
Collecting Car Data – Part 2
Posted by Adam Langley, Alec Proudfoot, Richard Walker, RechargeIT Team Part 1 talked about our datalogging hardware, this time we’ll focus on some of the technical details of the software.The dataloggers contain a 4GB flash card with a minimal Gentoo…
Collecting Car Data – Part 1
Posted by Adam Langley, Alec Proudfoot, and Richard Walker, RechargeIT TeamOne of the main purposes of our fleet of plug-in hybrids is to measure the performance of plug-ins compared to an unmodified hybrid car. We then post this information to our we…
Collecting Car Data – Part 1
Posted by Adam Langley, Alec Proudfoot, and Richard Walker, RechargeIT TeamOne of the main purposes of our fleet of plug-in hybrids is to measure the performance of plug-ins compared to an unmodified hybrid car. We then post this information to our we…
California Air Resources Board Hearing on the ZEV Program
Posted by Adam Borelli, Adam Smith, Alec Proudfoot, and Rolf Schreiber, RechargeIT Team On March 27th the California Air Resources Board (CARB) met to discuss the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Program. Prior to last Thursday’s meeting, members of…
Posted by Adam Borelli, Adam Smith, Alec Proudfoot, and Rolf Schreiber, RechargeIT Team On March 27th the California Air Resources Board (CARB) met to discuss the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Program. Prior to last Thursday’s meeting, members of…
California’s ZEV Program
Posted by Adam BorelliThe California Air Resources Board (CARB) is considering changes to the Zero Emission Vehicle Program (also commonly known as the “ZEV Mandate”) (see Appendix A) on March 27th at its Board meeting in Sacramento. This is a big de…
Power On!
Posted by the RechargeIT Team Introducing the RechargeIT Blog Power on! Not that we have anything against the sound of exhaust streaming out of a tailpipe, but electri…
Power On!
Posted by the RechargeIT Team Introducing the RechargeIT Blog Power on! Not that we have anything against the sound of exhaust streaming out of a tailpipe, but electri…