Why is the EV battery revolution still stuck on the runway?

I have a confession to make: my past predictions about Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology have been way too optimistic.

Theoretically, the opportunity is massive. We have gigawatt-hours of batteries on wheels sitting idle in driveways more than 95% of the time. In fact, right now in the United States, there are over 250,000 bidirectional-capable GM electric vehicles on the road. At 10 kW of export capacity each, that is 25 megawatts of nameplate capacity sitting on wheels at a time when data centers are fighting over every single kilowatt of grid capacity.

So, why are personal EVs still completely locked out of the grid-scale energy transition?

In my latest episode, I dive deep into the real-world barriers holding this technology back—and the simple truth of what utilities are doing wrong.

Transcript

Why V2G Still Frustrates

SPEAKER_00 0:02

This week, let's focus on something that's not data center related for a change, and that's V to G or V2X or vehicle to grid or vehicle to anything. This is a technology that has both fascinated and frustrated me for years, and one where my past prognostications have been way off base and far too optimistic. I would have thought that by now, with gigawatt hours of batteries on wheels, in cars that sit idle more than 95% of the time, the economic imperative of using that storage would have smashed through various market barriers like a battering or, should I say, battery RAM. But disappointingly, that hasn't been the case.

School Buses Prove The Value

SPEAKER_00 0:40

The best use cases thus far that I know of are from Zoom, the bus leasing company, with its 74 electric school buses in Oakland, California that deliver about two gigawatt hours of energy back to Pacific Gas and Electric on an annual basis. That project's a couple of years old, and Zoom just upped the ante in May with an announcement that it will deploy 104 bidirectional school buses in San Francisco this August, delivering a planned 3 gigawatt hours to the grade annually. For perspective, Zoom says that's sufficient to power about 1.2 million residences for three to four hours. And that fleet is expected to expand to 238 vehicles for the 2027-2028 school year. The good thing about school buses is they run on fixed and predictable schedules. They take summers off, and megawatts of batteries are parked at one location under the control of one decision maker. Contrast that with personal vehicles, which are another matter entirely. They're spread out, and each driver makes his or her own decision with their own mobility requirements.

The Five Requirements For Scale

SPEAKER_00 1:41

To make vehicle to home or vehicle to grid happen at scale, you need five things. First, you need a vehicle with a battery and associated architecture capable of delivering a bidirectional flow of power back to either the facility or the power grid itself, with the manufacturer backing that with an appropriate warranty. Then you need charging equipment that can pull the energy from the battery and convert it back to either buildings or to the grid, in both cases, converting DC power from the battery to the alternating current AC that the grid uses. That DC to AC conversion can happen in the vehicle, some OEMs do it that way, or through charging equipment. The next thing you need is software to facilitate the energy transactions, including the ability to ensure that drivers actually have vehicles with sufficient charge left to take them where they want to go, and ensure the battery hasn't been de-energized so far that participating in the event leaves the driver with the equivalent of an aerodynamic paperweight on wheels. After all, nobody buys a car to play with the grid. They buy cars for mobility. But if they can pay down some of the costs by moonlighting with the grid at times, so much the better. The next thing is needed is the economic opportunity, whether it's the ability to sell services to a distribution utility or into wholesale markets, or both. And then finally, you need an owner willing to trust that all this will work and that they will benefit from participating in such programs.

Pilots Stall Despite Capable EVs

SPEAKER_00 3:08

When the Ford F-150 Lightning came out with a Sunrun vehicle to HomeKit in May five years ago, I was excited. Here was a vehicle with between 100 and 130 kilowatt hours, depending upon range, sitting in its battery. Roughly three to four days worth of average residential electricity consumption and seven times the size of your average Tesla power wall. It would be configured to deliver that electricity to homes when needed in the event of power outages. And Hyundai Kia announced its platform was going to be vehicle to X capable as the Volkswagen, with the latter articulating a goal to control gigawatt hours of energy. So this was going to be a big deal. Then came the pilots, an early vehicle-to-everything and vehicle-to-grid programs, with school buses powering some grids and Nissan Leafs dabbling in some utility initiatives as well, while utilities like National Grid, Pacific Gas and Electric, Baltimore Gas and Electric, and others began talking of pilots. But those pilots have pretty much remained stuck on the runway. It's not like the vehicles don't exist. We have a raft of players of OEMs with vehicles capable of exporting power back to facilities, homes and the grid, from manufacturers like BMW, Hyundai Kia Genesis, Ford, GM, Lucid, Rivian, and Tesla. The capability is there. And theoretically, the available energy is there too. A recent Latitude Media piece noted that GM has over 250,000 bidirectional capable EVs in the wild in the United States, with each capable of exporting about 10 kilowatts. So that's 2,500 megawatts of nameplate capacity sitting out there on wheels, in an age where data centers are fighting for every kilowatt of capacity they can get, and that capacity is valued like it never has been in the past. Just look at the PGM auctions. However, one critical element that's been lacking is a cost-effective V to X connection.

The Real Barrier: Hardware Cost

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Vehicle to X or vehicle to grid requires bidirectional hardware. And that same latitude piece notes that GM's bidirectional charging equipment, for example, costs between $7,000 and $8,000 prior to installation costs. No utility program or competitive power market revenue stream is going to be close to making anybody whole with those upfront costs.

Ford’s Lower Cost Home Connection

SPEAKER_00 5:25

But Ford just did something that may help to change that equation and demonstrate the art of the possible to others in the space. In mid-July, it announced a new product that allows Ford F-150 customers to run a single connection between the truck's 240 volt pro power onboard outlet to a general ink transfer switch near the utility meter. Depending on one's vehicle, 7.2 or 9.6 kilowatts goes straight from the truck to the home electrical panel. So everything runs the same way it would when power is supplied by a backup generator, for example. Here's the impressive part. 800 utilities already have approved the General Inc. switch. So the package costs the truck slash homeowner about $1,100 plus an estimated $250 to $450 in installation costs. If the customer doesn't have a utility that's approved the General Link, then installation costs are more likely to track within $1,000 to $1,500 range. Let's

Backup Power Versus Generators

SPEAKER_00 6:24

compare that to the alternatives of backup generation. Like an F-150 and being in coastal Massachusetts, where last winter's major February blizzard had me out in the dark with 60 mile per hour winds blowing gasoline sideways as I tried to refuel my generator. I said enough of that. I bit the bullet, and last week I commissioned my new natural gas connected Generac with automatic transfer switch at a cost of over $13,000. Peace of mind has a price tag. But if I'd had an F-150, I probably would have jumped at that new offering instead. Ford's equipment is a start, but it doesn't get us to what I was hoping for, which is a low-cost approach to intersecting and interacting with the home's energy consumption or the grid on a frequent

Massachusetts V2G Rollout Confusion

SPEAKER_00 7:10

basis. And there's another bit of news on the VDG front that just came out as well, but it pretty well encapsulates my frustrations with the space. In late July, utilities Eversource and National Grid, as well as solar and battery company Sunrun, a vehicle to grid integration Pioneer Mobility House, and a leading company in the DER platform space, Energy Hub, well, they announced a joint effort to test V2G and promote V2G capabilities in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has over 150,000 EVs on the roads, so if this works and gets expanded, there's something potentially important there. Well, when I looked this up on Gemini, it said that the payments are the same as for the batteries in National Grids and Ever Sources programs on a per kilowatt basis of $275 per kilowatt during the June 1st to September 30th season, locked in for five years of participation with subsidized hardware. It also said events will typically be called between 2 and 8 p.m., running for two to four hours, with a maximum of 60 events per season. And it noted that drivers can set minimums to ensure the necessary vehicle range. I mentioned this per Gemini and also perplexity, which was no more helpful because the information isn't there at the utility source. If you look in Connected Solutions documents or search for the specific information on the utility's websites, you won't find it unless you're a better researcher than I am. The press release contains hyperlinks to the utility's connected solutions pages where one would expect to find EVs. Nope. You get batteries and thermostats. Really? Then if you go to the EV page, it mentions you need a special V2G charger, but doesn't offer any assistance or specify which ones are available. That's a

Make Participation Easy Or Lose People

SPEAKER_00 8:58

shame. One thing I learned when I headed up Constellation's DR Group, which after our acquisition of CPower got us to 1700 megawatts of dispatchable load and made us the second largest virtual power plant in the world, I learned if you want participation in demand response and DER programs, you have to make it easy. Otherwise, there are too many uncertainties and too many reasons for customers to say no. If utilities want maximum participation, they need to do a far better job of eliminating what I call transactional friction and what you probably call hassle factor. Here you have two utilities teamed up with best agreed companies in the space. They aggressively coordinated the PR, and I know as a former Forbes contributor, I got all kinds of outreach on emails and an opportunity to see the embargoed material ahead of the press release. And then they absolutely bombed the communications effort with the party that matters, the potential participants. And what do they want to know? They want to know what's the program going to cost? Who will install the equipment? What will I get as a result? What's the hassle involved? How many times will my car have to participate? And how will I know I won't be left stranded? And finally, how can I get out of the program if I hate it? You can't find any of that online. And it's not like we don't know any of this stuff or that we need to know this stuff. In 2023, Calusa ran a pilot with 2.2 gigawatt hours of energy shifted from hundreds of vehicles, and they published a great case study. There's other info out there as well. So why was this launch not handled more deftly? And one of the utilities finally going to get their act together in this V to G, V to X area. It'd be nice to know if I just missed something and that Gem and I, Perplexity, and I are all just a bit inept in our research capabilities.

Final Questions And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Well, thanks for watching and thanks for listening to Grind My Axe on this one, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.