The multi-billion dollar promise of vehicle-to-grid integration

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Latitude Media, covering the new frontiers of the energy transition.

• 0:07Shayle Kann?

  I'm Shayle Khan. 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 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. V2G, feeding that power back into the grid at times, has been the obvious answer to that waste for 30 years or something like that. And for 30 years, it's stayed mostly pilots. The standard explanation was always pretty similar. The cars sometimes technically couldn't send power back.

• 0:52Shayle Kann?

  The hardware just wasn't there. But that excuse, at least, is running out quickly. Almost every major automaker is now shipping or is announcing bi-directional models. Every cyber truck on the road can already export north of 11 kilowatts. Mine can do it, too. GM says it alone has more than 250,000 bi-directional-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. If 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?

• 1:36Shayle Kann?

  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 bi-directional charging bundle runs about $7,000 before installation. And grid programs so far have paid drivers a lot less than that. It 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 Letendre, who is the Senior Advisor at the Vehicle Grid Integration Council and the founder and editor of the newsletter v2gnews.com.

• 2:20Shayle Kann?

  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.

• 2:40Speaker 00

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• 3:24Speaker 00

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• 3:38Speaker 02

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• 4:12Shayle Kann?

  Steve, welcome.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  Thank you. Great to be here.

• 4:15Shayle Kann?

  All right, so we're going to talk V to G. I want to start from the technical perspective. What's actually required for a vehicle to discharge its battery into the grid?

• 4:24Speaker 03

  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. It responds to constraints that are established by the customer, the owner of the EV, to ensure that the vehicle is first and foremost

• 5:05Speaker 03

  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 and 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.

• 5:33Shayle Kann?

  Yeah, let's do that. Talk about how you can configure it. And 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?

• 5:42Speaker 03

  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. And then the other flavor is V to G AC. This is where their onboard conversion occurs.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  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 B2G 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 offboard V2G DC architecture.

• 6:58Shayle Kann?

  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 Cyber.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, 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 offboard 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,

• 8:01Speaker 03

  you have a lower-cost AC bidirectional charger, but there are costs that are then put onto the vehicle to have that grid-interacted inverter onboard the vehicle. Whereas the V2G DC architecture, you don't have that additional cost of that grid-interacted 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

• 8:45Speaker 03

  the jury suggests that for residential light duty vehicles that the V2G AC will offer likely a lower cost option for consumers.

• 8:53Shayle Kann?

  And so, given that, like, why, why hasn't GM or Ford, why haven't they gone AC native? Is it that they're not like, they're not yet fully V2G native, you know, and it's sort of like, we want it to be an add-on, not endemic to the vehicle, or is it something else?

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Well, you know, that's a great question. I don't know that I have, you know, 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 FC, which is the safety standard for V2G AC systems. And so this is to comply with IEEE 1511.8, 1511, 15118-2018, which is, you know, the governance for interconnecting of DERs to the grid system. So to date, today, there wasn't really a approved standard

• 9:55Speaker 03

  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, 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

• 10:16Speaker 03

  You know, 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 V2G AC architecture with an onboard inverter. And there are other auto manufacturers as well that I think are seriously considering pivoting to that AC architecture.

• 10:43Shayle Kann?

  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, if I want, if I'm a, trying to buy a passenger vehicle and I want to do V2G today, like what are my suite of options and what does it look like for me to actually enable V2G on those options?

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know, Shale, the way to really think about it is a V2G system, which would include both the EV and the charger. And 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, with your purchase. So today, when you think about, you know, what are the compatible EVs and bidirectional chargers on the market, you know, it's a fairly limited number of, of, of options. So when I, before I joined Vehicle Grid Integration Council as senior advisor, I was working for a company called Fermata Energy, and we deploy dozens

• 11:45Speaker 03

  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 bidirectional DC charger based on the Chatimo platform. And so we were deploying those systems across the country. Of course, the Chatimo standard is 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.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  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. And 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.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  And so the Kia EV9 is compatible with the Wallbox charging system to do a 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 of EVs and charging stations to increase. Similarly, 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.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  And then, and again, in the school bus space, most all of the school bus, 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.

• 14:11Shayle Kann?

  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. Um, let's talk about the economics though, like, 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're, you have a Cybertruck or whether you have a something else. But what is the, what is the upfront, what's the capex of making yourself V2G capable? And then as it stands today, what does monetization look like?

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, that's, that's, uh, it's a, it's a great question. It's the billion dollar question. And, you know, we are, again, early days, limited production. We're not manufacturing these chargers at scale. And so, you know, today, like a, a V2G DC system is going to be quite expensive, around, you know, eight to 10K for the full installation. I don't have good numbers on the V2G AC. The, the belief is that that will be significantly shrink the cost differential between a unidirectional and a bidirectional charging system. Um, so, you know, it's hard to say exactly what that differential is today.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  I would guess somewhere in, you know, the high hundreds to thousands or something, it's 1,000 to something in that range. So it is really, it's difficult to really pinpoint what that incremental cost is for bidirectional, given kind of the early stage of the industry and the limited deployments that we've seen, seen nationally. But one thing I think it's important to, to talk about is, is you talked about what's, what's the, what's the value of having that bidirectional capability? And 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.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  And in that case, there are very limited opportunities across the country. To actually monetize that bidirectional capability in terms of providing grid services. If you simply want to back up your home during an emergency, like that's a value that exists today. And the alternative is buying like 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. And my sense is that that's going to be very competitive cost relative to what it would cost to do a whole home backup generator. And so, so it's a huge important question about, you know, does the value

• 17:06Speaker 03

  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 V to G, 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. You know, for a 10 KW bidirectional charging system, you could potentially earn, you know, $3,000 per year by providing that grid service

• 17:51Speaker 03

  in a demand response or some other type of grid services program, VPP programs that are merging out there.

• 17:57Shayle Kann?

  I mean, that's pretty compelling. If you can get, if you can get that much and you have a 10 kilowatt system, then, you know, then even at today's costs, which are pretty high outside of Tesla, you pay back in a few years and I can imagine a lot of people doing that. So I, because 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 because you can compare it against a whole home generator or maybe like a, you know, three power walls or whatever.

• 18:34Shayle Kann?

  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 arrive, 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?

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you know, I think you can think about like stacking the value of, you know, the home backup power value and stack that with, you know, the incremental value that you receive from providing grid services to the utility. And so what we've seen is both the Ford system and the GM system was originally marketed and sold for V to H. And then through a software upgrade, they were able to unlock the full V to G capability for those customers located in those utility service territories where there was a monetization opportunity. You know, we see have opportunity in California and some utility programs, some pilot programs, Massachusetts, New York.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  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.

• 19:59Speaker 00

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• 22:08Shayle Kann?

  I want to get through some of the reasons that people have been skeptical of V2G in the past, right? 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, you know, logistical, I guess, considerations like that. How do you think about that set of things? What have we learned about that over time?

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, that's the first question I get whenever I'm at a conference. You know, well, what about the battery and the warranties? And that's a real important consideration, very important. And, you know, I got to say, it's quite a bit of gray area. Again, referencing the company I used to work at from Auto Energy, we actually worked very closely with Nissan, and Nissan actually

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Publicly stated in their warranty that use of the Fermata Energy Charger and bidirectional charging platform would not war would not impact the warranty on their their product. So that was kind of the first, I think, in in in the nation in the world where an OEM said, yes, we're going to approve the use of this vehicle for bidirectional charging. That hasn't there 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, you know, a lot of work to be done there and clarity among the OEMs to

• 23:36Speaker 03

  give consumers the confidence that if they use this capability, that it wouldn't avoid the warranty. And I I've got to believe that, given that they're bringing this capability, integrating 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. And I'm quite confident that, you know, 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, you know, much longer

• 24:20Speaker 03

  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 know, you've got 150, 125 kW, whereas if you're using it for grid services, you know, you're you're using maybe 10 kW through the bidirectional charger. So the the rate of discharge and the impact on the the battery is 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.

• 24:54Shayle Kann?

  What do you think 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

• 25:13Shayle Kann?

  You know, deploying all of my range, deploying all of my battery. My presumption is that, you know, in these programs, in the, in the software, there, you know, 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 the, relative to the value that that battery actually has, whether in a utility market program or just as whole home backup?

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, there, there, 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, on how the EV can be used for these programs. But I do think, you know, first and foremost, the EV, as I mentioned at the beginning, is, 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, 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

• 26:25Speaker 03

  the mobility capabilities of the vehicle that it was purchased for. But 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, you know, that it wouldn't make sense for, where they're doing long commutes every day. I often talk about, you know, B2G as part of the sharing economy. Not everyone chooses to use a personal vehicle to drive people from the airport to the hotel every day, every, on the weekends, you know, for, 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.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  And again, not everyone is going to participate in B2G programs, but if even a, a fraction of the EV owners who have the interest and the opportunity costs, which makes sense for them, then that could represent a, a significant Resource for the grid and really, you know, 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.

• 27:52Shayle Kann?

  So I, 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 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 like as part of my initial purchase decision, I say, yes, I want to be part of this program. Do we have that yet anywhere in V to G land? Like is Tesla selling Cybertrucks in Texas and saying, if you

• 28:34Shayle Kann?

  sign up for this program, we'll aggregate you and, you know, loop it into our retail. We'll be, we're a gent Taylor in Texas, so we'll loop it into our retail book or something like that. Or is it too early?

• 28:44Speaker 03

  No, that is my understanding that Tesla, you know, does have kind of an in-app process to

• 28:54Speaker 03

  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. And, you know, I have talked to folks in the OEMs and they do envision, you know, a future where that all happens, you know, at point of sale. Where you're, 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 kind of be enrolled in those programs with your permission. Are we there? Yet today, definitely not, but it does seem like that would be, you know, the preferred approach to

• 29:39Speaker 03

  to having that kind of point of sale decision where the consumer can easily enroll in a utility program.

• 29:45Shayle Kann?

  So how do you see this going over the next few years? Is this like, I could see a couple of paths. I 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.

• 30:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:17Shayle Kann?

  Or I could see this being one of these things where like it just, it's so idiosyncratic at the individual OEM level and, you know, 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 like grows incrementally, but it doesn't become commonplace.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:46Shayle Kann?

  You're, you're obviously a bull on the space, but like, how do you see it going?

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, no, I appreciate that question. And, you know, I often use rooftop solar as an analogy to vehicle to grid, like, you know, when at some point solar was expensive, it didn't make any sense. Why would you connect to the grid? And then what launched the rooftop solar industry was regulation, right? Each state had to pass interconnection, had to provide net metering compensation in 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 a regulations in the policies, fast forward 20 years, we've got a multi-billion dollar rooftop solar industry.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  The price of solar has come down dramatically. And similarly, I think we need policy leadership to say, yes, B to G is an important part of the energy ecosystem. There 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. So, you know, I do think, I think you're right. We can go in different directions. Like

• 32:15Speaker 03

  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. It's whether or not, you know, there's going to be ways to leverage these EVs with their bidirectional capabilities to deliver value to the grid through programs and, and different ways that will reward consumers for providing those services to the grid. So at BGIC, Vehicle Grid Integration Council, we represent

• 32:56Speaker 03

  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.

• 33:16Shayle Kann?

  Can I offer a counterpoint using your own metaphor, I guess, or comparison? Well, I think what unlocked residential solar. So I think, I think what you said, the regulation policy was table stakes, like 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.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:37Shayle Kann?

  It was when SolarCity and Sunrun and Sungevity and all these companies introduced the like PPA and lease model. And so the value proposition went from put down a bunch of capital upfront. And you'll get a seven year payback to put down very little or zero capital upfront. You'll save money on on day one, and that was the dominant model of solar for for quite a while. And I can imagine something similar happening in V to G if if, again, if the programs for V to G monetization in the grid become there, then you can imagine a scenario where the OEM or somebody says, OK, if you're buying this electric vehicle, you know, buy the bidirectional charger. And in fact, we won't charge you a dime extra for it. It's not an incremental cost.

• 34:20Shayle Kann?

  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, but but 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.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I totally agree. And what made those 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 V to G 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. I agree 100%.

• 35:11Shayle Kann?

  All right, Steve, this was very fun. Thank you for joining.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity.

• 35:18Shayle Kann?

  Steve Litender 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-Levenson. Mixing and theme song by Sean Markmont. Anne 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. You can find the audio version of the show anywhere you get your podcasts. I'm Shayle Khan, and this is Catalyst.