Google plans to extend its electric vehicle charging infrastructure to five percent of its parking spaces in an attempt to encourage its employees to buy the vehicles, said a Google executive in charge of its electric transportation program Thursday.
The company’s non-profit arm Google.org has been experimenting with electric cars on the Google campus to see how it can push their adoption on a more widespread basis.
On Thursday, the company said in a blog post that it’s updating its experimental electric car fleet with Chevy Volts and Nissan LEAFs, and that ultimately there will be 30 of them on the campus for Google exmployees to use in a car-sharing program. The cars are available to employees during the work week to enable them to get around either for work, or to run errands.
Rolf Schreiber, Google’s technical program manager for electric transportation, claims that Google’s electric vehicle program and its biodiesel shuttle system prevents more than 5,400 tonnes of CO2 from escaping into the atmosphere.
More than 3,000 people use Google’s biodiesel shuttles to commute to work.
“That’s like taking over 2,000 cars off the road, or avoiding 14 million vehicle miles every year!! he writes. “But we’re only one company, so we hope other companies think about how they can incorporate these new technologies into their own infrastructure. By supporting new, green transportation technologies, we’re enabling our employees to be green and doing our part to help spur growth in the industry.”
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