Wednesday, November 28, 2007

hybrids, solar and google

Google are getting into the renewable energy market by investing (through google.org) in solar, and in hybrid cars.

here's a link to the stats on one of their hybrid cars - this one has been fitted with an extra battery to improve performance.

http://www.google.org/recharge/dashboard/car?car=Machu%20Picchu&evy=3&evd=20071128&evt=000000

Note the MPG is a rather pathetic 54.4 - which is about what we get from our petrol C2. Shockingly the average MPG for an american car is 19.8 - this presumably is why the americans think the Prius is great, where as the rest of the world views it as a waste of space, or more charitably, a testing ground for mass production and marketing of electrically powered cars. Some little diesels can get at least /double/ the milage without the complication and cost of having batteries and generators on board.