

23 Jul 2026 · 35m · 16 chapters

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration—how bidirectional EVs could turn idle car batteries into grid capacity, and what must change for real consumer and utility value beyond pilots.
Steve Latender, senior advisor at the Vehicle Grid Integration Council; founder/editor of V2Gnews.com. Previously worked at Fermata Energy deploying bidirectional charging projects using Nissan LEAF (2015) and CHAdeMO-based DC chargers.
V2G needs three parts: bidirectional EV, bidirectional charger, and software to manage power while preserving mobility. Hardware is increasingly available (e.g., Cybertruck exports >11 kW; GM claims 250,000+ bidirectional-capable EVs). Main blockers are standards, warranty/degradation clarity, and economics/utility compensation. V2H (home backup) monetizes now; full V2G depends on utility programs and interconnection rules.
UL 1741 SC standards for V2G AC approved recently; Tesla in-app participation starting in Texas; PG&E V2X pilot in California; GM/Ford bidirectional upgrades via software; Nissan/Fermata warranty reportedly not impacted; utility peak-shaving programs paying roughly $3,000/year for ~10 kW in some cases.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes.
Discussion on the potential of vehicle-to-grid integration and its historical context.
“The standard explanation was always pretty similar.”
Technical discussion on what is needed for vehicle-to-grid technology.
“I want to start from the technical perspective.”
Explaining the differences between AC and DC architectures for V2G.
“And we can take it another level, particularly around where the conversion of the power from DC.”
Overview of current V2G-capable vehicles and their charging options.
“So there's an onboard inverter capabilities, and the Ford F-150 and the GM suite of EVs that have V2H and increasingly V2G are based on that off-board V2G DC architecture.”
Discussion on the costs and monetization of implementing V2G systems.
“But there are costs that are then put onto the vehicle to have that grid-interactive inverter onboard the vehicle.”
Understanding the differences between light-duty and heavy-duty V2G applications.
“So again, when you think about V2G, you want to think about light duty versus medium heavy duty and what's happening in those two different segments.”
Discussing the costs and monetization of bidirectional charging systems.
“So walk me through the cost, I guess, first.”
Analyzing the potential value and opportunities for bidirectional charging systems.
“And my sense is that that's going to be a very competitive cost relative to what it would cost to do a whole home backup generator.”
Examining the evolving utility compensation structures for V2G services.
“If you can get that much and you have a 10-kilowatt system, then even at today's costs, which are pretty high outside of Tesla, you pay back in a few years.”
Addressing common concerns regarding battery degradation and warranties.
“I think that the main ones, apart from the economics, is there enough value there, have largely been, will it degrade my battery?”
Discussing the balance between using EVs for backup power and maintaining mobility.
“And there's been, I'm sure as many of your listeners may know, there's been a rash of reports lately that's suggesting that EV batteries are lasting much longer than originally anticipated.”
Exploring the current state of V2G programs and market integration.
“And really, as I'm sure, again, your listeners know, the grid is facing multiple challenges around load growth, affordability.”
Explore how vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration is becoming streamlined within the sales process.
“And one of the nice things now in that market, because it's more mature, is if you're in a place where you could participate in a VPP program, it's sort of like a streamlined part of the sales process.”
Discuss potential scenarios for the widespread adoption of vehicle-to-grid technology.
“They're working with Pacific Gas and Electric in California to participate in their V2X pilot program.”
Understand how policy and regulation shaped the rooftop solar market and its relevance for V2G.
“And it takes a long time for people to figure out how to actually sell it to customers.”
Examine financing models that could facilitate the growth of vehicle-to-grid integration.
“Like any new emerging technology, there isn't certainty.”

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.
On Catalyst with Shayle Kann, what are the key points of this episode?
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.
0:02Latitude Media, covering the new frontiers of the energy transition. I'm Shayle Kann. I invest in early-stage companies at Energy Impact Partners. Welcome to Catalyst. So I drive a Kia EV9. Most days it sits in my garage with a 100 kilowatt hour battery inside doing nothing. That's about seven power walls worth of storage from an energy capacity perspective, and it's sitting parked and idle. And I'm not unusual. An electric car in general spends 90 to 95 % of its life doing exactly that. Vita G, feeding that power back into the grid at times, has been the obvious answer to that waste for 30 years or something like that.
0:43And for 30 years, it stayed mostly pilots. The standard explanation was always pretty similar. The cars sometimes technically couldn't send power back. The hardware just wasn't there. But that excuse, at least, is running out quickly. Almost every major automaker is now shipping or has announced bidirectional models. Every Cybertruck on the road can already export north of 11 kilowatts. Mine can do it too. GM says it alone has more than 250 ,000 bidirectional capable EVs on our roads. At about 10 kilowatts each, that's 2 ,500 megawatts of nameplate capacity. And that's one automaker. Which means we're about to run the real experiment.
1:22If the hardware is here and that capacity still doesn't show up on the grid, then the hardware wasn't really the thing standing in the way. What's left is arguably harder. There is a question of warranties. Do they treat grid exports as off-limits? Is it ambiguous? Is it clear? There are degradation fears that people have had about batteries that have to be overcome. The protocols maybe don't talk to each other. And the economics, I think most importantly, have to close for the person who owns the car. GM, for example, their bidirectional charging bundle runs about$7 ,000 before installation. And grid programs so far have paid drivers a lot less than that.
1:59It just doesn't pencil. It may be different for vehicle-to-home, V2H, where you're using it for backup power, but not so much for feeding it back into the grid. But again, that may be changing. My guest today is Steve Latender, who is the senior advisor at the Vehicle Grid Integration Council and the founder and editor of the newsletter V2Gnews.com. We get into why this resource that's been sitting here growing for 30 years might finally actually be arriving and delivering value, and what still has to break its way for that to happen. That's coming up next.
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4:12Steve, welcome. Thank you. Great to be here. All right, so we're going to talk V2G. I want to start from the technical perspective. What's actually required for a vehicle to discharge its battery into the grid? Yeah, there's three key components. The first is a bidirectional electric vehicle. It has to have the ability to draw power from the battery and send it to buildings or to the grid. The second piece is you have to have a bidirectional charger that can both send power to the vehicle and can also receive power and send it through the charger back to buildings with the grid. And the third piece is you need some sort of software platform that manages and optimizes that power flow.
4:55It responds to constraints that are established by the customer, the owner of the EV, to ensure that the vehicle is first and foremost providing the mobility services that the vehicle is purchased for from the consumer. So those three pieces. And we can take it another level, particularly around where the conversion of the power from DC. We know we take DC power from a battery and we convert it to AC power for use in buildings in the grid. And there's two different flavors of architecture out there. And I'm happy to talk about that if you think that would be of interest. Yeah, let's do that. Talk about how you can configure it.
5:36And then we'll talk about sort of like where we are today in terms of those. Do we have those three things out in the wild and where? Yeah, absolutely. So there's what we call a DC and an AC architecture. And that really defines where the conversion in a device called an inverter, which is a grid interactive inverter. It takes the DC power and converts it to AC power, as I mentioned before. For the DC architecture, that conversion happens off board the vehicle. It's either in the charger or a wall box that's adjacent to the charger. So it's off-board. So it's drawing DC power from the EV, converting it to AC power off-board and sending it to the building or to the grid.
6:16And then the other flavor is V2G AC. And this is where their onboard conversion occurs. So the vehicle sends AC power from the vehicle to an AC bidirectional charger. And so just to give you a sense of where we are commercially, the Tesla Cybertruck V2G product is an AC architecture. So there's an onboard inverter capabilities, and the Ford F-150 and the GM suite of EVs that have V2H and increasingly V2G are based on that off-board V2G DC architecture. Which partially explains, I think we'll talk about this more later, but it's much more expensive, as I understand it. You already have a Cybertruck, or if you already have an F-150 Lightning, and you want to do V2G, it's going to be more expensive for you to do so on the F-150 Lightning because of what you need to purchase in addition to the vehicle than it is on the Cybertruck.
7:18Yeah, I should note that there's been quite a debate in the industry, AC versus DC, in terms of what are the advantages and disadvantages. And there is a pretty clear advantage to the AC architecture around costs that you mentioned. So for the DC architecture, the charging station has to be a DC charger, or it has to have that capability to convert off-board from DC to AC. And so that device, again, it's kind of early days. They're kind of limited production, but that device today is quite expensive. And so the promise, as you noted, is with the V2G AC, the onboard conversion, you have a lower cost AC bidirectional charger.
8:06But there are costs that are then put onto the vehicle to have that grid-interactive inverter onboard the vehicle. Whereas the V2G DC architecture, you don't have that additional cost of that grid or natural inverter on the vehicle. That cost is off the vehicle in the charger or the wall box. And in the medium and heavy duty space, one of the big markets for V2G is in the school bus space. And the V2G DC is the predominant architecture there. We don't anticipate significant cost advantages from moving that larger platform to an AC architecture. So I think the jury suggests that for residential light-duty vehicles that the V2G AC will offer likely a lower cost option for consumers.
8:54And so given that, why hasn't GM or Ford, why haven't they gone AC native? Is it that they're not yet fully V2G native? And it's sort of like, we want it to be an add-on, not endemic to the vehicle, or is it something else? Well, that's a great question. I don't know that I have super great visibility into their internal decision-making processes, but one of the clear issues is around standards. The V2G AC UL standards literally just like a month ago were approved, the UL 1741 SC, which is the safety standard for V2G AC systems. And so this is to comply with IEEE 1511.8-2018, which is the governance for interconnecting of DERs to the grid system.
9:49So until today, there wasn't really an approved standard for V2G AC, and now that's just very recently changed. There is another pathway for getting interconnection approval for V2G AC systems, which Tesla has pursued in some jurisdictions, and we can get into that as well. So I think one of the issues were the standards weren't yet developed, and there perhaps was a simpler, more direct pathway for them to kind of do this with the DC architecture initially. But we are seeing companies, including I think Rivian has announced that they've got their R2 coming to market, which will be a B2G AC architecture with an onboard inverter.
10:35and there are other auto manufacturers as well that I think are seriously considering pivoting to that AC architecture. So that's a good segue. We've alluded to some of this. We talked about the Cybertruck, we talked about the F-150, we talked about GM generally, and then you just mentioned Rivian. But orient me, if I'm trying to buy a passenger vehicle and I want to do V2G today, what are my suite of options and what does it look like for me to actually enable V2G on those options? Yeah. You know, Shale, the way to really think about it is a V2G system, which would include both the EV and the charger.
11:11And then, you know, if the OEM is enabling full V2G capabilities, that will be part of kind of the software, the app that comes, you know, with your purchase. So today, when you think about, you know, what are the compatible EVs and bi-dimensional chargers on the market, it's a fairly limited number of options. So before I joined Vehicle Grid Integration Council as a senior advisor, I was working for a company called Fermata Energy. And we deployed dozens of bidirectional charging projects across the country using a Nissan LEAF, which was bidirectional when it was first introduced in 2015. and we had built our own bi-directional DC charger based on the CHAdeMO platform.
11:58And so we were deploying those systems across the country. Of course, the CHAdeMO standard has now gone out of favor in the United States. And so the new offerings are based either on CCS or the NAC, the North American charging standard. And so the Tesla system with the Cybertruck is commercially available today with that full suite of the truck and their charging system. And then we've got kind of the OEM kind of packaged offerings, which is the Ford F-150 Lightning and their Ford Station Pro with the Sunrun box that does the conversion. Similarly, General Motors has a OEM-branded charger that's bidirectional capable, can do full V2G, And that's compatible with, I think, most of their electric vehicle offerings on the market today.
12:50And then aside from those kind of OEM-linked pairings, there are also emerging partnerships between charger manufacturers and EV manufacturers. And one example of that would be Kia has partnered with Wallbox, which is a Spanish charger manufacturer. And so the Kia EV9 is compatible with the wallbox charging system to do full V2G capability. And then there's another company that we work with called Decibel. And they have a home energy station, which includes a bidirectional charger. And they have partnered with Volvo and Polestar to have their systems be compatible with their EV. And so we expect that kind of pairing between different manufacturers, the EVs and charging stations, to increase.
13:39Similarly, we'll see more OEMs have that kind of matched paired charging between the vehicle and the charger itself. So those are some examples of existing products on the market. And then, again, in the school bus space, most all of the electric school buses that are coming off the lines are bidirectional capable. and there are now several higher power DC bidirectional chargers that are compatible with those school buses. So again, when you think about V2G, you want to think about light duty versus medium heavy duty and what's happening in those two different segments. Right. So it seems like at the high level, I guess, focusing on the passenger segment, you know, somewhat limited number of options today, but a bunch of options that are emerging or available either directly through the OEM or through these partnerships or whatever, as usual, Tesla doing it all in-house and then a bunch of others sort of doing it through partnerships and so on.
14:34Let's talk about the economics though. Does it make sense to do it? So walk me through the cost, I guess, first. And I know this, as we said before, this differs whether you have a Cybertruck or whether you have something else. But what is the upfront, what's the capex of making yourself V2G capable? And then And as it stands today, what does monetization look like? Yeah, no, that's a great question. It's the billion-dollar question. And we are, again, early days, limited production. We're not manufacturing these chargers at scale. And so today, a V2G DC system is going to be quite expensive, around$8K to$10K for the full installation.
15:18I don't have good numbers on the BDG-AC. The belief is that that will significantly shrink the cost differential between a unidirectional and a bidirectional charging system. So it's hard to say exactly what that differential is today. I would guess somewhere in the high hundreds to thousands or something, 1 ,000 to something in that range. So it's difficult to really pinpoint what that incremental cost is for bidirectional given the early stage of the industry and the limited deployments that we've seen nationally. But one thing I think it's important to talk about is you talked about what's the value of having that bidirectional capability.
16:11And so the only reason you would invest in a bidirectional charging system if there is some sort of value or opportunity to earn revenue from having that capability. And in that case, there are very limited opportunities across the country to actually monetize that bidirectional capability in terms of providing grid services. is if you simply want to back up your home during an emergency, that's a value that exists today. And the alternative is buying a whole home generator for your home. Instead of spending that amount of money, whatever that would cost, you would invest in your home bidirectional charging system that would provide whole home backup power.
16:51And my sense is that that's going to be a very competitive cost relative to what it would cost to do a whole home backup generator. And so it's a huge, important question about, you know, does the value cover the incremental cost of going bidirectional? I think for simply home backup power, the answer is likely yes, it does. In terms of doing full V2G, providing grid services, the question is, you know, where do utilities provide compensation? What is the interconnection cost to participate in those programs? And we have seen in some jurisdictions where utilities are compensating resources for providing peak shaving in the 200 to 300 kW per season range.
17:40You know, for a 10kW bidirectional charging system, you could potentially earn, you know,$3 ,000 per year by providing that grid service in a demand response or some other type of grid services program, BPP programs that are emerging out there. I mean, that's pretty compelling. If you can get that much and you have a 10-kilowatt system, then even at today's costs, which are pretty high outside of Tesla, you pay back in a few years. I can imagine a lot of people doing that. So I, cause until that last bit, my takeaway from what you said was sort of like bullish V to H and bearish V to G, you know, like if you're using it for backup V to H, that being V to H, then, then it makes a lot of sense.
18:26Cause you can compare it against the whole home generator or maybe like us, you know, three power walls or whatever. And then it's kind of compelling, but if you're trying to do V to G, the monetization opportunities aren't really there, but it sounds like you're saying when, when the monetization opportunities arise, when these utility programs arrive, or if people are doing aggregated distributed capacity or whatever, then there's enough juice in the revenue that you might pay back pretty quickly. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, and I think you can think about stacking the value of the home backup power value and stack that with the incremental value that you receive from providing grid services to the utility.
19:05And so what we've seen is both the Ford system and the GM system was originally marketed and sold for V2H. And then through a software upgrade, they were able to unlock the full V2G capability for those customers located in those utility service territories where there was a monetization opportunity. We see you have opportunity in California and some utility programs, some pilot programs, Massachusetts, New York. We're seeing emerging opportunity in Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut. So, you know, I do think, you know, as you unlock that capability, that there will be increasing opportunities for consumers to add to the value of their bidirectional charging system beyond the simple home emergency backup functionality.
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21:49Utilities target, shape, and verify capacity down to the meter. Unlock flexible capacity that costs 40 to 60 percent less to deploy than traditional infrastructure in a fraction of the time it takes you to break ground on a peaker plant. Learn more at energyhub.com. I want to get through some of the reasons that people have been skeptical of V2G in the past. I think that the main ones, apart from the economics, is there enough value there, have largely been, will it degrade my battery? Is it going to break my warranty? Sort of like logistical, I guess, considerations like that. How do you think about that set of things?
22:31What have we learned about that over time? Yeah, no, that's the first question I get whenever I'm at a conference. Well, what about the battery and the warranties? And that's a real important consideration, very important. And I've got to say, it's quite a bit of gray area. Again, referencing the company I used to work at, Fermata Energy, we actually worked very closely with Nissan. And Nissan actually publicly stated in their warranty that use of the Fermata Energy charger and bidirectional charging platform would not impact the warranty on their product. So that was kind of the first, I think, in the nation, in the world, where an OEM said, yes, we're going to approve the use of this vehicle for bidirectional charging.
23:19There hasn't been much beyond that other than Ford, I believe, in their warranty, indicates that use of the F-150 for home backup power wouldn't void the warranty. So there is a lot of work to be done there and clarity among the OEMs to give consumers the confidence that if they use this capability, that it wouldn't void the warranty. And I've got to believe that given that they're bringing this capability, integrating it into electric vehicles and marketing as such, that that will have to mature and the OEMs will have to explicitly come up with some parameters around what types of bidirectional charging uses would be acceptable under the existing warranty.
24:06And I'm quite confident that we'll see some of that in the coming years. And there's been, I'm sure as many of your listeners may know, there's been a rash of reports lately that's suggesting that EV batteries are lasting much longer than originally anticipated. And the other thing to note is that when you think about using an EV battery for traction in a vehicle, you've got 150, 125 kW, whereas if you're using it for grid services, you're using maybe 10 kW through the bi-directional charger. The rate of discharge and the impact on the battery is less when you're discharging at a lower rate relative to what you're actually doing when you're driving the vehicle, accelerating into traffic and whatnot.
24:55What are you seeing in terms of the other thing that I think people have asked about historically is, okay, if I'm going to use my vehicle as backup for my home, I'm using it in the scenario wherein the grid is down. If the grid is down, I can't charge my vehicle either. And so I'm concerned about deploying all of my range, deploying all of my battery. My presumption is that in these programs, in the software, where you can sort of set parameters, say I don't want my battery to go below whatever percent or something like that. How are you seeing the interaction between those types of settings that people are setting up and then relative to the value that that battery actually has, whether in a utility market program or just as whole home backup?
25:41Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. There isn't a lot of good data out there in terms of what consumers are placing in terms of limits on how the EV can be used for these programs. But I do think, first and foremost, the EV, as I mentioned at the beginning, is purchased for mobility, for transportation purposes. And so when it makes sense, when the vehicle is available and it doesn't restrict mobility, then that vehicle could provide home backup power and could provide grid services as appropriate. And so, you know, I do think that any type of program does have to fundamentally preserve the mobility capabilities of the vehicle that it was purchased for.
26:29But when you think about, I mean, my EV sits in my garage. I work from home, you know, it sits in my garage for, you know, days at a time without ever being used. And I think there's other folks that it wouldn't make sense, but where they're doing long commutes every day. I often talk about V2G as part of the sharing economy. Not everyone chooses to use a personal vehicle to drive people from the airport to the hotel on the weekends through Uber, but there's enough people that are willing to do that where their lifestyle, their opportunity costs are such that it makes economic sense for them to do that.
27:06And again, not everyone is going to participate in B2G programs, but if even a fraction of the EV owners who have the interest and the opportunity cost, which makes sense for them, then that could represent a significant resource for the grid. And really, as I'm sure, again, your listeners know, the grid is facing multiple challenges around load growth, affordability. And EVs, I think, can be a real important part of that affordability equation by using the grid more efficiently and managing how we charge vehicles and then also using the discharge capability to make even better use of our existing infrastructure.
27:51sure. So I moved to a new house, what, eight months ago, something like that. And I'm in Northern California in the Bay Area. And so I'm freshly going through the rooftop solar and storage. I'm process, purchasing process. And one of the nice things now in that market, because it's more mature, is if you're in a place where you could participate in a VPP program, it's sort of like a streamlined part of the sales process. I want to get solar and storage, and I can elect to participate or depends on how the offering is made. But as part of my initial purchase decision, I say, yes, I want to be part of this program.
28:26Do we have that yet anywhere in V2G land? Is Tesla selling Cybertrucks in Texas and saying, if you sign up for this program, we'll aggregate you and loop it into our retail? We're Jen Taylor in Texas, so we'll loop it into our retail book or something like that? Or is it too early? No, that is my understanding that Tesla does have kind of an in-app process to participate in these programs. They're started in Texas. They're working with Pacific Gas and Electric in California to participate in their V2X pilot program. And so I believe it is kind of a streamlined in-app process where you sign up for participation in these programs.
29:10And I have talked to folks in the OEMs, And they do envision a future where that all happens at point of sale, where you're at the dealership, you're making your decision, and the dealer rep is knowledgeable about what programs are available, and you would automatically be enrolled in those programs with your permission. Are we there yet today? Definitely not. But it does seem like that would be the preferred approach to having that kind of point of sale decision where the consumer can easily enroll in a utility program. So how do you see this going over the next few years? Is this like, I could see a couple of paths.
29:50I mean, one being this never really takes off, but I kind of think it's going to. But I could either see it being there's some inflection point all of a sudden over the course of a couple of years, like every new EV that's introduced on the market is bi-directional capable at a minimum. And then the programs start to emerge and, you know, people sign up in mass and this actually becomes like a significant asset on the scale of what we're deploying for residential batteries, stationary batteries, very quickly. Or I could see this being one of these things where like, it just, it's so idiosyncratic at the individual OEM level.
30:25And, And it takes a long time for people to figure out how to actually sell it to customers. And then meanwhile, the monetization isn't really there in most places. And so it ends up being predominantly a home backup thing, but it's not sold when people want home backup. And so it kind of grows incrementally, but it doesn't become commonplace. You're obviously a bull on the space, but how do you see it going? Yeah, no, I appreciate that question. And I often use rooftop solar as an analogy to vehicle-to-grid. Like when at some point solar was expensive, it didn't make any sense, why would you connect to the grid?
31:06And then what launched the rooftop solar industry was regulation. Each state had to pass interconnection, had to provide net metering, compensation, and many states offered incentives. And so there was a view that rooftop solar was a public good. that we should encourage consumers because of the benefits, the public good of rooftop solar. And so they put in place the regulations and the policies. Fast forward 20 years, we've got a multi-billion dollar rooftop solar industry. The price of solar has come down dramatically. And similarly, I think we need policy leadership to say, yes, V to G is an important part of the energy ecosystem.
31:50There have been numerous studies that have shown that electric vehicles are the single largest source of grid flexibility that will be on the grid in the not too distant future, and that we need to put in place policies and regulations that will support consumers on their journey to adopt this technology. I think you're right. We can go in different directions. Like any new emerging technology, there isn't certainty. But when you look at the trends, most every major OEM manufacturer has announced plans to bring bidirectional vehicles to market if they already don't have them. And so I think this is going to be a very common feature of vehicles going forward.
32:34It's whether or not there's going to be ways to leverage these EVs with their bidirectional capabilities to deliver value to the grid through programs and different ways that will really reward consumers, for providing those services to the grid. So at VGIC, Vehicle Grid Integration Council, we represent the industry, OEMs, charger manufacturers, that all see this vision where EVs don't become a burden on the grid, where they actually create real benefits. And the more people that recognize the opportunity, the more policy leadership we have, the more likely it is that this technology will become more common.
33:16Can I offer a counterpoint using your own metaphor? I guess, for comparison. I think what unlocked residential solar, so I think what you said, the regulation policy was table stakes. It had to happen. Net metering had to be in place at that time, et cetera. But actually what caused the inflection for residential solar in the late 2000s, which is really when the market started to take off, was financing. It was when SolarCity and Sunrun and Sungevity and all these companies introduced the PPA and lease model. And so the value proposition went from put down a bunch of capital up front and you'll get a seven-year payback to put down very little or zero capital up front, and you'll save money on day one.
33:55And that was the dominant model of solar for quite a while. And I can imagine something similar happening in V2G. Again, if the programs for V2G monetization in the grid become there, then you can imagine a scenario where the OEM or somebody says, okay, if you're buying this electric vehicle, buy the bidirectional charger. And in fact, we won't charge you a dime extra for it. It's not an incremental cost. It's the same cost as what your charger would have been otherwise. And not only that, but you're going to get whole home backup for free. But you have to let us use the battery sometimes when there's a grid event and, you know, under these conditions.
34:33But you're getting free home backup. That's a super compelling value proposition. I'd like to see that emerge. I think something like that is what, like, truly unlocks the market. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And what made that solar lease kind of a bankable was the fact that you had that policy foundation where there was guaranteed value over time that you could then finance against and create that kind of opportunity for consumers. And so really what we need for V2G is a bankable revenue stream that can create the environment where these types of financing and leasing innovation can take hold and really encourage mass adoption.
35:10I agree 100%. All right, Steve. Steve, this was very fun. Thank you for joining. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. Steve Lettender is a senior advisor at the Vehicle Grid Integration Council and the founder and editor of V2Gnews.com. This show is a production of Latitude Media. You can head over to Latitude Media for links to today's topics. This episode is produced by Max Savage-Levinson, mixing and theme song by Sean Marquandt, and Bailey edits the video version of the show. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. All of our episodes are now on YouTube. You can subscribe to Latitude Media for episodes of this podcast and Open Circuit.
35:45You can find the audio version of this show anywhere you get your podcasts. I'm Shale Khan, and this is Catalyst.
Most electric vehicles spend nearly all of their lives parked, doing nothing. But under the hood of those idle cars, a massive store of energy sits untapped. The Kia EV9, for instance, holds a 100-kilowatt-hour battery—which is equivalent to about seven home backup batteries—just waiting to be utilized.
Yet despite this enormous potential, Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology has remained mostly limited to small-scale pilot programs for decades. But with advanced tech hitting the market, that could soon change.
In this episode, Shayle sits down with Steve Letendre, senior advisor at the Vehicle-Grid Integration Council and editor of V2G News, to explore why the V2G revolution is finally moving from concept to reality. They break down the technical battle between AC and DC architectures, tackle the looming questions around battery degradation and warranties, and debate the business models that will finally convince everyday drivers to plug their cars back into the grid.
Shayle and Steve discuss topics like:
- The unused energy capacity hidden in parked EVs
- The technical debate, cost trade-offs, and hardware differences between off-board power conversion (DC architecture) and on-board power conversion (AC architecture).
- Current compatible EV options, including the Nissan Leaf, Tesla Cybertruck, Ford F-150 Lightning, and Kia EV9
- The high upfront cost of V2G systems
- Consumers' fears regarding whether discharging power to the grid will ruin their EV batteries or void manufacturer warranties.
- Streamlining the V2G enrollment process via VPP programs or at point-of-sale
- How financing can unlock mass V2G adoption
Resources
Catalyst: Repurposing EV batteries for grid storage
Catalyst: How China is reshaping the global auto market
Catalyst: Enter the electric supercycle
Latitude Media: Electric Era is turning its EV-charging tech into a data center power play
Latitude Media: The future of optimized EV charging
Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.
This episode of Catalyst is brought to you by ENGIE, the smarter energy supplier. ENGIE doesn't just provide the power to run your business — they supply the energy to move it forward, with reliable, flexible solutions built for what's next. Learn more at engieresources.com.
Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. Peak season puts every grid to the test — and the utilities that pass are the ones that built flexible capacity before they needed it. EnergyHub works with more than 170 utilities to coordinate 2.5 million devices and 3.4 gigawatts of dispatchable flexibility through a single platform designed to perform when it counts most. See what that looks like at EnergyHub.com.
Catalyst is brought to you by Bloom Energy. Bloom Energy fuel cells deliver affordable, ultra-reliable onsite power for hospitals, utilities, and data centers – at speed and at scale. Learn more by visiting BloomEnergy.com.