RechargeIT is one of five initiatives within Google.org, the charitable arm of

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, created with the aim to reduce CO₂ emissions, cut

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

use, and stabilize the

electrical grid An electrical grid (or electricity network) is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids consist of power stations, electrical substations to step voltage up or down, electric power tran ...

by accelerating the adoption of

plug-in electric vehicle A plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) is any road vehicle that can utilize an external source of electricity (such as a wall socket that connects to the power grid) via an detachable power cable to store electrical energy within its onboard rechar ...

s. Google.org's official RechargeIT

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

has not been updated since 2008.

History

The RechargeIT initiative was unveiled in June 2007. As part of the program Google.org awarded US$1 million in grants and announced plans for a US$10 million request for proposals to fund development, adoption and commercialization of

plug-in hybrid A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) or simply plug-in hybrid is a type of hybrid electric vehicle equipped with a rechargeable battery pack that can be directly replenished via a charging cable plugged into an external electric power so ...

s, fully electric cars and related

vehicle-to-grid Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) describes a system in which plug-in electric vehicles (PIEVs) sell demand response services to the electrical grid. Such services are either backfeeding electricity to the grid, or reducing the rate of charge from the gri ...

(V2G) technology. As part of the program Google established a partnership with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to develop software for energy management. Together with the announcement of the initiative, Google also announced that it had switched on the

solar panel A solar panel is a device that converts sunlight into electricity by using photovoltaic (PV) cells. PV cells are made of materials that produce excited electrons when exposed to light. These electrons flow through a circuit and produce direct ...

installation at its

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

headquarters in order to help the company reduce its environmental footprint and also to power its plug-ins with clean solar electricity. At 1.6

megawatts The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named in honor o ...

the project became the largest solar installation at that time on any corporate campus in the U.S. and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. The actual rollout of the initiative took place in January 2008.

Google's carsharing program

By early 2010 Google's Mountain View campus had 100 available

charging station A charging station, also known as a charge point, chargepoint, or electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE), is a power supply electrical device, device that supplies electrical power for recharging plug-in electric vehicles (including batter ...

s for its share-use fleet of converted plug-in hybrids available to its employees through a free

carsharing Carsharing or car sharing (AU, NZ, CA, TH, & US) or car clubs (UK) is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. It differs from traditional car rental in that the owners of the cars are often pri ...

program and for those employees who drive to work in their Tesla Roadster (2008)

electric car An electric car or electric vehicle (EV) is a passenger car, passenger automobile that is propelled by an electric motor, electric traction motor, using electrical energy as the primary source of propulsion. The term normally refers to a p ...

s. Solar panels are used to generate the electricity, and this pilot program is being monitored on a daily basis and performance results are published on RechargeIT's website.RechargeIT Driving Experiment
- ''RechargeIT is a program sponsored by Google.org, a non-profit created by Google''.

Driving experiment

In addition to the data collected for two years when the converted plug-ins were driven by Google employees, RechargeIT set up a controlled test using three conventional gasoline vehicles, two regular hybrids and two plug-in converted Ford Escape Hybrid and

Toyota Prius The is a Compact car, compact/small family car, small family liftback (supermini/subcompact sedan (car), sedan until 2003) produced by Toyota. The Prius has a Hybrid vehicle drivetrain, hybrid drivetrain, combined with an internal combustion ...

. The results of the seven-week driving experiment for the converted Prius plug-in showed an average fuel economy of across all trips, and for city trips, the maximum reached for any of the driving conditions tested. A summary of the results of the seven-week driving experiment are the following

GFleet and employee shuttles

In order to reduce the

carbon footprint A carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) is a calculated value or index that makes it possible to compare the total amount of greenhouse gases that an activity, product, company or country Greenhouse gas emissions, adds to the atmospher ...

of its employees' commute and based on the results of the RechargeIT pilot, the company expanded its corporate carsharing program to create Google GFleet and also introduced shuttle buses powered with

biodiesel Biodiesel is a renewable biofuel, a form of diesel fuel, derived from biological sources like vegetable oils, animal fats, or recycled greases, and consisting of long-chain fatty acid esters. It is typically made from fats. The roots of bi ...

. In addition, more charging stations were deployed at the

Googleplex The Googleplex is the corporate headquarters complex of Google. It is located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. The original complex, with of office space, is the company's second largest square footage assemblage of ...

for employees owning

s. The initial GFleet was made of the converted plug-in hybrids from the RechargeIT initiative, and by mid-2011

Nissan Leaf The is a battery-electric car manufactured by Nissan, produced since 2010. It was offered exclusively as a 5-door hatchback until 2025, which since then has become a crossover SUV model. The term "LEAF" serves as a backronym to ''leading envir ...

s and

Chevrolet Volt The Chevrolet Volt is an electric vehicle car that was manufactured by General Motors, and also marketed in rebadged variants as the Holden Volt in Australia and New Zealand and the Buick Velite 5 in China, and with a different fascia as the ...

s were added, expanding the

corporate fleet to more than 30 plug-in electric vehicles. In December 2011, the first production Ford Focus Electric was delivered to Google and incorporated into the GFleet. By early 2012, Honda Fit EVs and Mitsubishi i-MiEVs have also been added to the GFleet. The Fit EV was incorporated as part of Honda's field testing program of its upcoming electric car. Through the partnership Google will analyze the vehicle environmental performance including CO₂ reduction, energy consumption and overall energy cost. Employees who use the biodiesel shuttle system to commute to work at Mountain View, have the GFleet vehicles available for their errands, off-site meetings, and emergencies. Employees can also use GBikes, Google's on-campus bike fleet. As of June 2011, a total of 71 Level 2 chargers were added to the existing 150 Level 1 chargers, bringing the Googleplex total capacity to more than 200 chargers, and another 250 new ones are scheduled to be installed. Google's goal is to electrify 5 percent of the parking spaces—all over campus, free of charge to its employees. Daily, up to a third of Bay Area employees take the shuttle to work. The corporate coach fleet exceeds the

United States Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on De ...

's 2010 bus emission standards. The buses run on 5% biodiesel and are fitted with filtration systems that eliminate many harmful emissions, including nitrogen oxide. Google is testing solar panels on some to power air circulation, so that shuttles can turn off their engines while they wait for passengers, thus reducing fuel use and emissions. As of mid-2011, Google estimated that its Gfleet and biodiesel shuttle system resulted in net annual savings of more than 5,400 tonnes of , the equivalent of taking over 2,000 cars per day off the road, or avoiding 14 million vehicle miles every year.

References

External links

RechargeIT home page

Google.org RechargeIT: Plug-in Hybrids
by Google at YouTube. 15 June 2007.
RechargeIT: The Driving Experiment
by Google.org at YouTube. 22 July 2008.
Google introduces its G Fleet of Electric Vehicles
by Google.org at YouTube. 21 July 2011. {{DEFAULTSORT:Plug-In Hybrids In California Google.org Road transportation in California

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...