Rolf Schreiber

"The more Googley thing to do is to set up a contest for getting the best mileage," says Google engineer Rolf Schreiber. No such contest is planned, but members of the company's climate-change group have an informal rivalry to exceed 105mpg. "I could totally see something erupting in social networks where people compare driving styles," he adds.

Google has bigger plans than improving gas mileage. Like other plug-in champions, Google wants to make hybrids a form of distributed storage, pushing and pulling power to and from the electrical grid to make it more resilient to fluctuations in demand. But simply substituting coal-fired electricity for gasoline is not particularly Googley, hence the giant solar panels that hover like comic-strip thought balloons over its hybrid parking lot. A study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy suggests that in some states with heavy dependence on coal-fired power, using plug-in hybrids releases as much greenhouse gas as driving unimproved Priuses.

"When you look at the horizon, there are chances for big changes here," says Schreiber.

"The more Googley thing to do is to set up a contest for getting the best mileage," says Google engineer Rolf Schreiber. No such contest is planned, but members of the company's climate-change group have an informal rivalry to exceed 105mpg. "I could totally see something erupting in social networks where people compare driving styles," he adds.

Google has bigger plans than improving gas mileage. Like other plug-in champions, Google wants to make hybrids a form of distributed storage, pushing and pulling power to and from the electrical grid to make it more resilient to fluctuations in demand. But simply substituting coal-fired electricity for gasoline is not particularly Googley, hence the giant solar panels that hover like comic-strip thought balloons over its hybrid parking lot. A study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy suggests that in some states with heavy dependence on coal-fired power, using plug-in hybrids releases as much greenhouse gas as driving unimproved Priuses.

"When you look at the horizon, there are chances for big changes here," says Schreiber.

For RMI's description, see http://www.move.rmi.org/­move-news/­the-smart-garage--v2g----guiding-the-ne
xt-big-energy-solution.html . Public pages for the event, including information on who will attend, start at http://www.move.rmi.org/­capabilities/­smart-garage.html . Notably, in its papers about the Smart Garage, RMI has substituted for "V2H" (vehicle-to-home) the broader acronym "V2B" (vehicle-to-building.) Over at Google.org, RechargeIT engineer Rolf Schreiber has posted a "V2G Overview" http://rechargeit.blogspot.com/­2008/­09/­vehicle-to-grid-v2g-overview.html
. And EV advocate Earl Killian (who occasionally guests at the Climate Progress blog) writes on "Plug-ins and the Grid" at http://www.killian.com/­earl/­editorials.html#e20081003 .

Rolf Schreiber, RechargeIT Engineer, Google

Rolf Schreiber was our host. He is an engineer who fell in love with Kauai and has also taken Bodhinatha through the Googleplex. Rolf works on the solar/electrical energy initiatives at Google, and also works on their charitable efforts to reduce poverty and disease around the world.

At the entry we find a scrolling display that has all kinds of interesting words and phrases running by. Searches at this moment included: wal-mart, MAPS, world holiday calender, poems, road rash, 2000 election for texas governor and something called annemieke nuijten.

Rolf took the monks, plus Easan Katir and son Karti, through the amazing offices. Behind is a real-life wind tunnel prototype of the Virgin Space Ship 1 vehicle that, in the next two years, will take people into weightless regions of the lower stratosphere.

The campus, which more like a college that a corporate office, is quiet today, as it's Saturday and the 17 restaurants that serve free food are all closed.

Thank you, Rolf.

The new numbers match reports by drivers, conversion companies, CalCars and national laboratory analyses. http://blog.google.org/­2008/­07/­our-plug-ins-perform-90-mpg.html Our plug-ins perform: 90+ MPG by Rolf Schreiber, RechargeIT Engineer We were curious to see how the cars would perform under controlled conditions - and how they would stack up against other conventional automobiles typically found in U.S. households. With that, the RechargeIT Driving Experiment was born!

"The more Googley thing to do is to set up a contest for getting the best mileage," says Google engineer Rolf Schreiber.No such contest is planned, but members of the company's climate-change group have an informal rivalry to exceed 105mpg."I could totally see something erupting in social networks where people compare driving styles," he adds.

Google has bigger plans than improving gas mileage.Like other plug-in champions, Google wants to make hybrids a form of distributed storage, pushing and pulling power to and from the electrical grid to make it more resilient to fluctuations in demand.But simply substituting coal-fired electricity for gasoline is not particularly Googley, hence the giant solar panels that hover like comic-strip thought balloons over its hybrid parking lot.A study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy suggests that in some states with heavy dependence on coal-fired power, using plug-in hybrids releases as much greenhouse gas as driving unimproved Priuses.

"When you look at the horizon, there are chances for big changes here," says Schreiber.

A Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Systems Overview: presented by Rolf Schreiber, Google's RechargeIT PHEV program. Home | Who We Are | Our Philosophy | Site Policies | Become a Sponsor | Credits | Products Of The Year 2008 | RSS Feeds | Site Map