Enlarge / If you’re going to charge your car at home, why not use it as a battery when it’s just parked?
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Disaster preparedness is becoming more popular as the effects of climate change and the fallacies of human institutions become more apparent. The automotive industry has followed this trend, with many pointing to the fact that an electric car is essentially a giant backup battery that can power your home for days in case of an emergency.
Now Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) will begin testing bi-directional charging in California with new pilot programs announced this week at General Motors and Ford.
Bi-directional charging received its first big boost since the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake, and in 2017 Nissan told Ars that several thousand electric vehicle grid connections had already been completed in Japan. But at the time, the company had no immediate plans to launch the feature here in the US. Since then, Nissan has carried out other experiments to connect the car to the network, for example, connecting a convenience store to the mains.
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Ford has made a lot of noise about the ability of the upcoming F-150 Lightning to get home. When Ford President and CEO Jim Farley first revealed the name of Ford’s electric pickup truck, he also mentioned that the truck could “power your home in the event of a power outage.” This feature will require an 80-amp Ford charging station, which can provide up to 9.6 kW of electricity to the home. (For context, the F-150 Lightning will ship with 98 kWh or 131 kWh usable battery packs.)
General Motors may be late to the electric car launch party, but it was the first to announce Wednesday that it is working with PG&E on car-to-home technology. Both companies will begin lab testing of various GM electric vehicles this summer, and then begin testing car-to-home connectivity in some customers’ homes. Both companies say they plan to open a larger trial to customers by the end of this year.
On Thursday, Ford and PG&E unveiled similar plans at the CERAWeek conference in Houston. Few details have been made public so far, though we know that, unlike the GM pilot, PG&E won’t be able to remotely control the car-to-home feature on demand. And, unfortunately, neither the Ford Mustang Mach-E nor the e-Transit will support bi-directional charging; it will just be the F-150 Lightning.