We've gotten many inquiries today in the wake of The New York Times report http://www.calcars.org/­calcars-news/­516.html. (Sorry for the erroneous re-posting of the story.)

Here is the official word from Google.org: "As Google.org is committed to helping to address global warming, we are interested in encouraging the rapid development of cleaner and more efficient energy solutions, such as advanced hybrid flex fuel vehicles. While we have no plans to announce at this time, we look forward to joining with others working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by investigating and investing in new approaches and technologies that could have the potential to reduce this global threat."

Here's CalCars' statement: "We're delighted Google is focusing on advanced hybrid flex fuel vehicles and we're holding our breath for what comes next from them."

Here are our further comments, on this news and on the extraordinary events of the past weeks (see http://www.calcars.org/­news-archive.html)

With all this news, people are assuming that it's "game over." Plug-in hybrids will happen. And as a side note, people assume CalCars is flourishing ("CalCars must be -- they continue to be in the middle of great news every day!") Or maybe they think we've achieved our goals. In fact, we won't be done until most new production vehicles run mostly on electricity and are fully optimized to use lightweighting, digital controls, customization and many other technologies. Together these will reduce CO2 emissions and oil use enormously and bring us "Better Cars."

Perhaps as a side effect, contributions to http://www.calcars.org/­sponsor.html have fallen off sharply. Yet though I can talk to CEOs, with a few exceptions they aren't funding us. Of our three full-time people, Technology Lead Ron Gremban and I are now back to being full-time volunteers (which we can't do for long) and Communications Director John Davi has cut back to 25% time as a volunteer, doing start-up consulting the rest of the time. And while we're making progress in interesting people in the for-profit concept, that isn't going to be quick, and it won't fund all our advocacy efforts.

As a result we're passing up opportunities all the time to participate in events, start new projects, work with battery companies, Tier One integrators, etc.

I mention all this in hopes that in addition to the welcome support from those among the 4,000 subscribers to CalCars News who can afford to contribute, well-connected people will be able to bring to us a few high-wealth individuals who recognize the value of our efforts and whose tax-deductible contributions can enable us to concentrate on doing our jobs instead of spending so much time raising money.

Later I expect to turn this into a blog posting at http://www.hybridcars.com/­blogs/­power where you can comment.

Thanks for all your encouragement!