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Last Updated on: 18th April 2025, 01:18 am
There are actually not a lot of things that are different about electric cars compared to gasoline-powered cars for owners. You can recharge at home instead of having to go to a gas station. You have instant torque. You don’t have to go for oil changes. And you may need to be a little more attentive to charging options along your route if you plan to go on a long road trip. But there’s one more thing that EVs offer that gets a lot less attention, because we’re not yet at a scale where it’s a big deal — but it will be. That matter is vehicle-to-everything capability (vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, vehicle-to-load, vehicle-to-robocop, etc.).
A new program in Northern California is especially exciting in this regard. The program is one of the most advanced and innovative I’ve seen. I recently sat down with GM Energy’s Chief Revenue Officer, Aseem Kapur, and Director of Clean Energy Transportation at PG&E Lydia Krefta to discuss a new Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) pilot program, which is being offered to GM EV owners in Northern California at the moment. GM EV owners can now enroll and get up to $4,500 in incentives to unlock the power of bidirectional charging — they can supply energy back to their home, or eventually even to the grid.
Among other things, Lydia discusses PG&E’s “hourly flex price” (or real-time rate), understanding how many customer EVs are plugged in at home versus at work during the day, and reducing the need to upgrade transformers or other parts of the grid thanks to smart charging and discharging — saving grid customers money.
Aseem highlights that they’ve discovered battery degradation is a complete non-issue for this. That is particularly good to hear since battery degradation from extra battery use has been one of the top concerns of using EVs for V2X systems. He also leaned into a discussion of virtual power plants, EVs becoming a resource in the case of natural disasters, integration of these features into EV drivers’ apps, and more.
Watch the whole video discussion above for more.
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