Delaware’s Willett Kempton Snags Google Grant $$ for plug in car
Google pushes 100-mpg car
Offers millions to advance plug-in hybrid vehicles and other technologies that link nation’s transport system to the electric grid.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Google said Tuesday it is getting in on the development of electric vehicles, awarding $1 million in grants and inviting applicants to bid for another $10 million in funding to develop plug-in hybrid electric vehicles capable of getting 70 to 100 miles per gallon.
The project, called the RechargeIT initiative and run from Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, aims to further the development of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles – cars or trucks that have both a gasoline engine and advanced batteries that recharge by plugging into the nation’s electric grid. (Snip)
The $1 million in grants went to Brookings Institution to run a conference on plug-ins, CalCars and Plug-In America to educate the public about plug-ins, and the Electrical Power Research Institute, the Rocky Mountain Institute and Dr. Willett Kempton from the University of Delaware for plug-in R&D.
This is fantastic!
Only problem is the car keeps a log of everywhere you go.
*rimshot* !!
Yeah, but a quick search yields you instant results of your destination.
Now I’ve got this crappy toolbar installed in my garage, and I can’t get rid of it.
Go Willett Go!
In all seriousness, consider this: A plug in car succeeds in transplanting the point source of emissions from the car to the electricity generating plant, 50% of which is generated using the traditional dirty coal process. Another 22% is generated using natural gas and oil; that’s 72% generating the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
Taking into account the inefficiencies of generation by fossil fuel burning, especially coal, and transmission line losses, does this plug in car approach still make any sense? If we must burn non-renewable fossil fuels for our cars for a while, isn’t it better to burn it in the vehicle rather than at the generator plant? That said, the inefficiency of the gasoline powered car must also be factored in.
For some interesting reading on this question and all the issues, a detailed examination of the efficiencies leads to the conclusion that the plug in car is indeed the most efficient, by a factor of two over the next best, the hybrid car.
http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/twentyfirstcenturycar.pdf
See page 3. Page 4 has the conclusions on greenhouse (carbon dioxide) emissions, and it is the same story, the plug in emits only one third compared to the hybrid.
I’ve just decided to buy a hybrid! Should I wait for the plug-in hybrid? Hummmmmmmm!
Looks like Willett may have hitched his cart to a winner!!!
It sounds like ytou talked yourself into it mid way through your comment.
I think Kempton’s focuses on also re-capturing the energy that is lost when the brakes are used to slow and stop the car.
Actually, regenerative braking is pretty much a standard these days on hybrids.
Here is where a plug in hybrid makes sense. We have an infrastructure here that already is delivering a standard source of energy (the grid) and it has multiple possible inputs to the system. So while today we create our electricity with fossil fuels, in the future, we can use wind power, or nukes (gasp), or hydroelectric, or solar or tidal or whatever. This makes it so that you don’t have to figure out how to put a solar panel on your car to drive.
Ideally, the plug-in hybrid will also give us a high-efficiency interim step to hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles. Also a plug in hybrid gets you most of the distance driven in a day, but can run on gas for the really long trips. Not as efficient, but quite practical.