Google’s Street View fleet is taking its first step towards going electric. The company has teamed up with Jaguar Land Rover to equip a Jaguar I-Pace EV with Google’s Street View Mapping tech. They’ll begin driving in Dublin.
Jaguar engineers will also load the I-Pace vehicles up with special air quality measuring sensors. This will allow the vehicles to run double duty as they drive around, mapping streets and also testing local air quality around Dublin. Aclima, the team behind the mobile air sensors, is looking to collect data on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels, and other fine particles (PM2.5) on a street-by-street basis.
Google is hoping to map out more than just streets—it’s working to develop maps of street-level air pollution. The company is currently working on a 12-month project called “Air View Dublin” with the Dublin City Council. The project is part of a larger effort to map hyperlocal air quality under Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer program, which is working to “help cities measure emission sources, run analyses, and identify strategies to reduce emissions.”
“Air quality is a serious concern, especially for cities, but there is a gap in terms of localised data and insights available to both decision makers and citizens. As part of this project, we’re using technology to capture this important data and make it accessible so that together with Dublin City Council, we can drive solution planning,” stated Paddy Flynn, VP of Geo Operations at Google.
Google has previously equipped its vehicles with Aclima’s sensors in 2015 in Denver, Colorado, and it carried out a similar mission in London in 2018. Now, in this year-long project, Google is working with scientists to get the data mapped out with these newly equipped electric vehicles.
via Engadget
