Google Moves to Reinvent Transportation

On a sunny afternoon back in June 2007, members of the media, academia, and the tech industry gathered to watch Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin drive a white Prius around the parking lot of the search giant’s Mountain View (Calif.) headquarters. It wasn’t just a slow news day—the Prius had been converted into a plug-in vehicle, and Page and Brin had gotten behind the wheel in order to announce the company’s RechargeIT initiative, which included, among other things, $10 million to back plug-in vehicle technology.