This link has been bookmarked by 4 people . It was first bookmarked on 31 Jul 2008, by Takuya Homma.
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05 Aug 08
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Let’s not kid ourselves: Google’s investment in transportation so far is paltry compared to what it’s spending on other industries. But while we’re not predicting that Google will make a G-car any time soon, its efforts to push plug-in vehicles as a way to build out a smarter power grid, and to bring some of the intelligence of information technology to transportation, will be worth watching.
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01 Aug 08
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With the move, Google has gone from advocating plug-in vehicle technology to investing in it, much the way a venture capitalist would.
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As a massive power user, the company has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars toward helping remake the energy industry, investing in solar and wind technology and in making its data centers more energy efficient. Since plug-in vehicles can help utilities stabilize energy delivery, lithium-ion battery technology like ActaCell’s and plug-in vehicles like Aptera’s Typ-1 are essentially an extension of Google’s energy investments as they could provide important energy storage capability to the power grid.
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Google is also betting that the future of transportation will be networked and controlled via software, just like our laptops and gadgets. And not just connected via the Internet, but through the network of the power grid, too. Rolf Schreiber, an engineer with RechargeIT, says that beyond these initial investments, Google is also looking to back companies that build software that can control the rate at which plug-in vehicles charge.
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But while we’re not predicting that Google will make a G-car any time soon, its efforts to push plug-in vehicles as a way to build out a smarter power grid, and to bring some of the intelligence of information technology to transportation, will be worth watching.
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