Ok so if you have been following along here, the project to which I was referring to that Google undertook was entitled ' Rechargeit'. I will try to give you as much possible information on it below.
What this experiment started out with was taking Toyota Prius' and retrofitting them to use an electric motor for power. After all you need an electric car for an experiment like this one, but at the time of the study, no production electric vehicles existed. I am unsure of what kinds of batteries they used, but I am guessing Lithium ion. If anyone is able to find this out for sure I will post the info that you find. You can see the full results here.
What this test relied upon was driving in various conditions and recording how much fuel it used. The Prius' were equipped with electric motors and were referred to as 'Gfleet'. To accomplish this they installed Hymotion/A123 production plug in hybrid kit. As well each car was retrofitted with data recording devices-- the conventional cars were retrofitted with these instruments too. This allowed Google to have real time data of the cars' performance.
According to their own website, an embedded computer running Linux, a wireless data card, a GPS and an AC power monitoring device to monitor charge power was added to each vehicle. In addition, the embedded computer connected to the vehicles CANbus which is a component since I know 2000 at least. Google only refers to the battery as being a 'hybrid' battery but does not tell us of what type it was.
It should be noted this is not an exact science. The problem with it, as Google says on their website, that the test subjects kind of skewed the data. They noticed this because they did not take it on normal trips. But instead they used it more or less for their commute, driving a short distance, rather than going around the country. I would venture to guess this had two primary consequences. First of all the conventional vehicles probably got lower gas mileage than they would have while taking long trips. Furthermore, I would venture to guess that the electric models may have gotten lower results as well.
I think I should point out here that I will be going over the specifics of the chargers specifications in my very next post.
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