Michael Kanellos
Google’s plug-in hybrid confab: don’t expect miracles yet May 28, 2008 at 9:25 AM
Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant and arbiter of all things cool, will be sponsoring a conference in Washington D.C. on June 11 and 12 on plug-in hybrids with the Brookings Institute. The company is asking viewers to submit videos on why they’d like to own a plug-in hybrid. Post the video by June 4 on YouTube.
The company will also likely discuss the data it has been gathering on its own use of plug-in hybrids as corporate fleet cars.
It should be an interesting event. But keep this in mind: although plug-ins cut fuel consumption, the cost/performance benefits over plain vanilla Prius hybrids remains a work in progress.
Here’s some data from Google’s own site. The plug-ins it owns get an average of 66.2 miles per gallon, a figure that factors in the power these cars obtain from electricity fed in from wall sockets. Regular Priuses get 44.6 miles per gallon.
That’s nearly a 50 percent increase in fuel economy. Go team plug-in! The plug-ins also get more than triple the 19.8 miles per gallon figure for the U.S. car fleet as a whole.
But when you translate the mileage into dollars, the comparisons to normal Priuses are less exciting. The plug-ins owned by Google use 425 fewer gallons of gas per year than a regular car. A normal Prius uses 337 fewer gallons. Thus, a plug-in only uses 88 fewer gallons a year (assuming you drive 12,000 miles a year) than a regular Prius. If gas costs $4 a gallon, that means the plug-in only saves $352 a year. If gas costs $5, you save $440. (Google will also likely provide updates on this data.)
Unfortunately, converting a regular Prius into a plug-in costs anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 now. Paying off the cost of the retrofit with gas savings at the moment, therefore, takes decades of driving. But many consumers right now are willing to pay that. And when manufacturers such as GM begin to build plug-ins at the factory in the next few years, the price premium will drop substantially.
Mileage for plug-ins will also be higher in most instances. Google uses its cars for short hops around town, which cuts mileage. If you drive the cars on the freeway more, or take them for longer jaunts, plug-in mileage can get into the 80 mile per gallon plus range, Alec Proudfoot, an engineering product manager at Google working on RechargeIT (the name of the plug-in effort), told me earlier this year.
And in the interests of disclosure, I’ll insert my own opinion. Plug-ins and clean diesels represent the best opportunities to reduce gas consumption, but plug-ins face a challenge when it comes to battery prices. If manufacturers can get the plug-in premium (over a regular hybrid) to $5,000 plug-ins will fly off the showroom floor.
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Unfair comparison; Comparing cost of “conversion” hybrids — which are most certainly more expensive and less efficient than production plug-in hybrids is neither fair or realistic. Th!nk City price and mpg comps would be more realistic, although I’m not sure that data is available.
“Unfortunately, converting a regular Prius into a plug-in costs anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 now.”
If the google employees are only using the vehicles for “short hops around town,” why are they hauling around internal combustion engines? Seems to me that all-electric vehicles would be a lot more appropriate.
Also, what exactly is a “clean diesel”? If there is an improvement upon a diesel engine, maybe it could be called “cleaner diesel.” Better than bad does not equal good.
Please see the new article on our website SelfPoweredSystems. It describes how instead of needing power from the grid, electric cars using a breakthrough technology will need no recharge plug. Instead, they will be able to wirelessly sell power to the local utility when appropriately parked. That eletricity may be worth $10,000/year to the power company. Can this pay for your future car?