Auto industry and utilities must collaborate to ensure EVs help grid — reports

By David Ferris | 07/19/2024 06:51 AM EDT

Electric vehicles have long been eyed as mobile batteries that could provide backup power for the grid.

A man plugs in an electric Tesla sedan at his home in New Berlin, Wisconsin.

A man plugs in an electric Tesla sedan at his home in New Berlin, Wisconsin. Morry Gash/AP

Ensuring electric vehicles benefit the grid — rather than burden it — will require unprecedented cooperation between automakers and electric utilities, according to two major reports released this week.

The reports — one from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI) and another from the Department of Energy — address a budding sector often called “vehicle-to-grid.” The idea is that EVs could act as mobile batteries, helping solve the grid’s supply problems instead of just driving up energy demand.

But experts say that the sector’s progress isn’t keeping up with the speed with which Americans are buying more EVs and starting to form new habits.

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“You’re talking about exponential step changes” as the number of EVs on America’s roads could grow eightfold by 2030, said Bienvenido Clarin, a team lead on electric transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit electric-grid research organization.

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