Google to help map US electric-car future

Google’s at it again. In a month that’s already seen the search-engine giant put $168 million toward the world’s largest solar project, announce Kansas City as the first municipality to receive Google Fiber high-speed broadband and invest in the world’s largest wind farm, Google is now teaming up with the US Department of Energy (DOE) to create an online network showing the location of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country.

Google and 80 other EV-related companies are joining with the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to create a resource with consistent, up-to-date information about the EV charging stations in communities nationwide.  Drawing on Google Maps, the collaborative effort will coordinate an online network of all US charging stations and will serve as the primary data source for GPS and mapping services tracking electric vehicle charging locations.

More information on the network can be found at the DOE’s Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Centre.

As part of the Obama Administration’s goals of reducing US oil imports by one-third by 2025, the DOE has taken several new steps to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles. They include the availability of $5 million in new funding for community-based efforts to deploy EV infrastructure and charging stations.

As we’ve said before, we’ve seen the energy future, and it’s Google-icious.