Wanted to get these photos up today after the fun event at work - Google went ahead and converted a fleet of 100 Priuses to PHEV! They plug nicely into the solar panels they've recently put up over the parking lot, so the electricity delivery couldn't be more efficient - or clean.

http://picasaweb.google.com/soopahman/GooglePHEVSolar

One other thing about these photos - they're taken with my crappy cellphone camera, which has no zoom feature - so when it looks like I'm standing right in front of the founders of Google - that's because I'm standing right in front of them. They're just that open about access at work, despite their fame. Very cool.

I asked the guys who did the mods and bought the fleet etc a lot of questions so if you guys have any questions, ask away! I'll pass on the details I gathered at the event.

 

Google is also being very open about data from some of their fleet vehicles. Look in here:

http://www.google.org/recharge/

DAS

 

You bet! For now it's just those few cars online, but you can see in the photos a laptop and some other equipment in the trunk - that's all tracking equipment, none of it is required for the PHEV to function. Once all the 100 PHEVs have those trackers installed, you'll get a nice 100 data points for MPG, usage habits by Googlers, and maybe even how often they break down.

 

That is truly awesome.

The only question I have, after looking at their raw data, is: for the "control" Priuses (not converted to plug-in), why is their mileage so abysmal? 39 mpg? 40 mpg? They need to talk to some of the folks around here for some driving tips!

Great work, Google folks. Keep it up - we desperately need the leadership.

 

The people who drive those Priuses are all Prius novices, having no idea how to get MPG out of a Prius - all the Prius drivers who know their stuff use their OWN Prius. I would estimate there are about 1000 privately-owned Priuses at Google on any given day, but it could certainly be more. I've always thought Toyota should just roll a camera down Google's parking lot from the Google logo, past all the Priuses, and then just put up text saying, "The greatest minds in the world can't be wrong."

Once the PHEVs are setup, THOSE will certainly see usage by Hypermilers, and I'm looking forward to tweaking 200mpg out of them ;o) Or 500... or infinity... .

Yeah, the leadership at Google really is amazing. This is only my 3rd week here at Google and I feel like once a week Google does something that changes the world. The photo album I linked to includes "Stanley 2.0" which is the self-driving car Google invested in. This version can handle urban traffic and bad drivers, although it's not great with guessing what pedestrians are going to do.

 

Stanley 2.0- is that the Stanford solar car project, or some other somewhat similar Stanford robotic car project, right? I sometimes confuse those two. I really get a kick out of all the Stanford connections that pop up in things like this. When I was a student there, I had a friend who worked on the solar car project, and it always made an appearance at student functions in White Plaza or the Quad. Such a strange-looking car. The new one, which is winning all those races, is much different, though.

Thanks for sharing the pictures!

 

The first Stanley won the DARPA Grand Challenge:
http://www.grandchallenge.org/

That URL is likely to change, by the way, from the 2005 win, around November of this year... google it for better hits if so.

In any case, that was about getting a car to drive autonomously for over 100 miles through the desert. Obstacles were few although when they did arise they often lead vehicles to disaster. Stanford won the race by a significant margin by using a Neural Nets approach, having the car tail a professional driver and learn what "good driving" looks like in terms of data. It innovated in the Neural Nets space by adding criticism - so data it had recorded as "good driving" that later proves wrong frequently would now be removed, rather than just always growing the data and hoping to statistically drown wrong results.

So, no not a solar car.

This Stanley 2.0, aka Junior, needs to drive in a much more constrained environment. It's being called the Urban challenge but will probably be done in an abandoned town, and vehicles will need to avoid other vehicles at places like intersections.

The beauty of this is that it may someday lead us to cars that get us from A to B without our help. Most likely the US's lawsuit-happy, sue-everything-rewarding climate will never allow for that however. The really sad part is that this is the DARPA Grand Challenge - as in the military's research arm, the only research arm in the US with a lot of money. So add a big gun to the top of all these self-driving vehicles and picture them in countries filled with poor people, and you get the more likely result of success here. Bittersweet.

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp

 

I've got a solution to that problem. After months of watching bwilson's work on this site, I nominate him as the official trainer of the Google fleet drivers. I might even be willing to donate a small sum to help send him out there to teach a 1-day crash course on basic efficiency techniques, to whip those guys and gals into ship-shape.

In fact, anyone who can get 50+ mpg out of a Prius I has my vote for President.

Always happy to volunteer somebody else for a job...

 

Yes, one of the nice things about this program is that when you take out a car you'll see how people have generally been doing with it in terms of MPG. Like the MFD, it's more likely to get people wondering how someone like me managed 200mpg, and ask on the mailing lists.

Unfortunately the gas is free to Google employees as part of the program. The entire reservation system matches Zipcar and Flexcar down to the last detail. Methinks Enterprise is experimenting with competing directly against that business model... . So, free fuel means you'll always come back to a full tank (no reason to leave the next employee empty), but it would be nicer if the gas was automatically deducted from our paycheck according to some formula - encouraging people to think even more about how to avoid using gas in a car that could potentially use not one drop of gas. Nor produce one bit of CO2.

We'll see, hopefully the large employee base here learns MPG techniques from the opportunity.

 

You know, if my company will provide bus around the neighborhood, BTW, I live very close to my office, about 8 miles away. The only reasons that keeps me from seeking any other form of transportation is because I have to cross one railroad, 8 traffic signals and across one major highway intersection. If a company bus is available. I will be the first one to buy the monthly pass and wait at the bus stop.

If we do want to save energy, not just car pool, public transportation should be available. Google should also consider that...