IDT Energy Looks at What's New at the DOE

The Department of Energy is getting into high gear with some of the programs which are helping to develop electric cars and more advanced batteries with which to run them. The DOE hosted what was called a “Plug-In Vehicle and Infrastructure Workshop” which was attended by almost 200 interested parties and another 600 who participated on-line. The main topic of the workshop was how to speed-up the introduction of electric-drive vehicles into the marketplace. The program showed in what ways federal leadership can quicken preparation for vehicles which are hopefully going to be in car showrooms by the end of this year. The Obama Administration has dedicated almost $5 billion in loans and grants to motivate innovation, creativity, manufacturing and finally the deployment of these electric-drive vehicles.

Google Plug-Ins Get Great Mileage

As a supplier of electricity, IDT Energy is interested in the latest trends in the development of improved electric car technology. Here is an interesting item from something Google.org has been up to lately.

Google.org is the organizational arm of Google.com. As such they are committed to improving the world in many different ways. One of those ways is a Google.org initiative to reduce CO2 emissions, reduce the use of oil, encouraging greater use of plug-in electric cars in order to stabilize the electric grid.

In Mountain View, California, Google headquarters, there is a fleet of demonstration vehicles to run experiments with and compile data on how well these cars can do.

During a recent experiment Google asked some of their employees to drive these cars for seven weeks and see how they did. They observed an average of 93 mpg for all trips, and 115 mpg for trips just in the city. Remarkable!