Mentioned very briefly, and with far less emphasis than the many descriptions of the tiny size of Google’s new driverless car, is that Google’s new experimental fleet of robotic cars are electric. That’s important because as one of the leaders of developing the software and artificial intelligence that will move autonomous cars through the streets, Google is now also helping set the path for the hardware of the future industry, and it’s skewing that path toward electric vehicles. Google has a long history of tinkering with electric cars. They built up a large fleet of plug-in cars for Google employees to use years ago. The program was called the RechargeIT Initiative and was funded with $10 million. I met one of the leaders of that group at an event over six years ago. Today if you go walk around Google’s campus it’s got one of the largest employee fleets of plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars out there.

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