ZAP Electric Car Sighting at Google

Google has become an outspoken proponent for plug-in vehicle technologies so it shouldn't be any surprise that a camera phone picked up the sighting of a ZAP Xebra electric city car (with stripes) on the Corporate Campus in Mountain View. It's nice to know that people at Google still remember ZAP. If you have been a long-time ZAP follower you might recall Google's pre-IPO PR campaign where co-founders Sergey Bring and Larry Page were splashed across the national media zipping past cubicles on their ZAPPY electric scooters. Imagine our excitement to see our latest ZAP trolling the Google Campus, although it has probably grown a thousand times since 2000. If you haven't heard about Google's initiative to reduce CO2 emissions, they call it RechargeIT http://www.google.org/recharge. This non-profit foundation via Google's philanthropic arm aims to reduce CO2 emissions, cut oil use, and stabilize the electrical grid by accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology. According to news reports, Google has taken going green to record proportions at its corporate headquarters, aka the Googleplex. They have installed a solar carport for plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles. They have also installed some 9,200 solar panels that cover almost every rooftop on campus to partly power the Google campus in what could be the world's largest solar array for a U.S. corporation. Last September, Google issued a $10 million request for proposals for electric car research and development and Google co-founders say they plan to spend "tens of millions of dollars" to fund research into making renewable energy cheaper than coal. Lofty goals by anyone's standards, but if there is one company that can pull it off, Google never ceases to amaze me.