Google offers $10M for best for-profit green car ideas

Google continues to look for electric and other alternatives to gas-guzzling, earth-warming cars.

Today, Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm, said it will offer $10M to start-ups offering the best ideas for advancing “sustainable transportation.”

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Google has supported non-profits in this area before, but this time it is backing for-profit ventures. “Consumers still can’t buy plug-in vehicles – and that’s a problem,” the company said in a statement. “The severity of global warming requires solutions from NGOs, governments, individuals and (very importantly) the private sector.”

The company has already made $1 million in grants to non-profit organizations.

Google said existing automakers need to bring their own cars to market, but that plug-in vehicles — ones you plug into a socket to recharge with electricity — also need its own ecosystem of companies in order to flourish.