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Table of Contents
⚡ This Week’s Big Charge
💡 What Smart EV Charging Could Be
I thought I was hot stuff the one time I plugged a coffee pot into my electric vehicle during a winter power outage. But as satisfying as that coffee was (and it was), I knew I was only scratching the tip of the iceberg when it came to bidirectional charging.
For those who don’t know, that’s the clunky term for an EV’s ability to act as a mobile power bank—to send electricity back into another device, or your home, or even the grid itself.
Not every EV can do this, but in 2025, it’s becoming available with an increasing number of cars. And this week, Ford showed what the future could look like if this becomes more widespread: cheaper power bills, less demand on electric utilities, and even making money by selling electricity back to the grid.
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🛻 What We Know About Ford’s Home Power Management Program:
The F-150 Lightning has native bidirectional charging. When paired with Ford’s Charge Station Pro home charger and Home Integration System from Sunrun, owners can unlock some special features—if they have a participating utility.
It works like this: electricity rates are cheaper mid-day and at night. They’re highest in the evening when everyone’s home, watching TV, cooking dinner, and so on.
With Home Power Management, the truck automatically charges during cheaper times and then powers the house itself during more expensive times of day. This is all managed via the truck’s built-in software.
Essentially, the truck becomes a big battery that lets your home skip the most expensive parts of the day, in terms of electric costs. This should bring down home power bills.
At one utility, Texas’s TXU, Ford says it could save up to $600 per year in electric costs.
If they need to drive somewhere, they just unplug or use the app to recharge the car instead of the home.
But that’s not all: it allows EV drivers to return power to the grid, potentially earning financial incentives from their utility.
Or as Ford puts it: “Your next side-hustle may come from your parked vehicle.”
It may be limited for now—one vehicle, from one brand, in select utility markets—but it’s a fascinating glimpse of what EVs can do as America’s electric grid is under more strain than ever.
🔌 Power Bills Soaring:
Americans are indeed concerned about their electric bills because costs continue to escalate: “Rate hikes are expected to show up in the bills of over 124 million customers this year,” CBS News reports.
Residential electricity prices rose 11% just between January and August.
There are several reasons for this: more air conditioning use as temperatures rise, other extreme weather events, and even the rising costs of poles, wires and electrical equipment.
And then there’s the power-hungry AI data centers. One stunning example: “When all the data centers in New Carlisle (Indiana) are built, they will demand more power than two Atlantas,” The Atlantic reports.
EVs, too, can put additional strain on grids; see this 2024 Department of Energy study. But they also represent an opportunity: they can be “more than just another user of energy on the grid.”
📊 More Context:
Thus, one solution is to have EVs everywhere act as “vehicle-to-grid (V2G) distributed power plants,” as Ford puts it. A gas car’s “energy” only goes one way—EVs can do much more than that.
This is not a new idea. AC Propulsion, a long-defunct startup that’s a kind of ancestor to Tesla, experimented with this in California in the early 2000s. (Direct-current battery power plants even go back to the early 20th century.)
So why hasn’t this caught on? Lots of reasons, including a lack of standardization: utilities, carmakers and equipment providers speaking “the same language regarding how the system controls would work.”
But this is changing quickly. The SAE International has developed several standards for V2G, and carmakers are teaming up.
ChargeScape is one joint venture that runs the software for V2G, and Ford, Honda, Nissan and BMW are taking part.
And more and more companies are making this a foundational part of EVs. All General Motors EVs are capable of bidirectional charging, and they’ll all get vehicle-to-grid capability starting next year.
GM is also leaning hard into home energy systems, just like Tesla offers. Some estimates say bidirectional charging could be an $840 million industry by 2035.
🧠 My Take:
One thing that’s fun about covering this space: it’s not about where we’re at now, but where things are going.
Ford is billing this as a unique feature that draws people to EVs beyond gas savings and instant torque. It’ll be even bigger when Ford debuts its $30,000 electric truck in 2027, which will include this same tech.
Ford officials said they've been piloting this with several utilities and more are coming. The carmaker hopes to scale this program across the country quickly.
A lot has to happen for this to be widespread and successful: more EVs on the road at reasonable prices, V2G standards, affordable home equipment and more utilities getting on board.
I’d also argue that this is so new and unconventional—so different from the gas car experience—that carmakers and dealers will really have to hold customers’ hands on explaining this, and setting it up as painlessly and seamlessly as possible.
But over time, this could be a remarkable solution to America’s soaring power needs.
📰 More Stories That Matter
General Motors is discontinuing Apple CarPlay and Android Auto on its gas-powered cars. Check out my analysis on this later today. [The Atlantic]
“America’s advantage is still ingenuity. What’s missing is a recognition that electrification, manufacturing, and digital infrastructure are now parts of the same strategic system.” [Latitude Media]
A lot of interesting concepts debuted at the Japan Mobility Show this week, none more so (I’d argue, anyway) than the Toyota Corolla that’s due to be sold as an EV, hybrid and a gas car. [InsideEVs]
Toyota hasn’t yet had the software glow-up we’ve seen from other carmakers. The new 2026 RAV4 is meant to be the beginning of that shift. [Engadget]
Expenses tied to hitting reset on its EV strategy plunged Porsche to a $1.1 billion operating loss in Q3. [CBT News]
Meanwhile, Ford is pinning its electric future on that $30,000 EV truck and platform, but predicting much lower EV demand for now. [Benzinga]
📡 On My Radar
Nio, the Chinese battery-swapping EV brand, is running into some serious headwinds—even with sales up 40% this year. Can it survive as China’s auto sector faces an inevitable contraction? [Financial Times]
Meanwhile, BYD is getting serious about Japan with an electric kei car. Can the Chinese giant succeed in what’s arguably the world’s toughest car market? [Reuters]
Rivian and General Motors are among the latest U.S. companies to undertake layoffs, particularly as EV sales are expected to cool off. [Wall Street Journal]
🔌 Charging News
Just 1.5 miles from Houston’s busy Hobby Airport, you’ll now find 40 150-kilowatt DC fast-chargers—perfect for that last-minute pre-flight recharge. [BP Pulse]
The charging boom isn’t just for blue states: “The Southeast is one of the most dynamic EV charging markets in the country,” according to Kempower’s North American president. [CleanTechnica]
Convenience store chain execs say their EV charger investments aren’t paying off—at least, not yet. [Utility Dive]
Ionna is one of the few EV charging operators that doesn’t have a smartphone app. Here’s why. [InsideEVs]
Instavolt is bringing the UK’s first battery-powered EV chargers to the M6 motorway. [Motoring Research]
Charging giant Alpitronic just hit a huge milestone: over 100,000 DC charging ports across Europe. [EV Power Pulse]
🔋 Battery Industry News
In a surprise shift, the Trump administration and the Japanese government said they will invest $350 million into Mitra Chem, a California-based lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery startup. [The Information]
Nissan says it’s made significant progress on solid-state batteries that double EV range, and hopes to commercialize them by 2028. [Nikkei]
The quest to beat China in the battery race may lie with battery recycling. Here’s a great profile on rising titan Redwood Materials. [Washington Post]
Fun fact: the global battery industry has grown 83% in the last five years. But 70% of it is controlled by five players, all Chinese. [ESS News]
The collapse of Gotion in Michigan is “a missed opportunity to gain manufacturing expertise America needs to compete globally.” [Battery Tech Online]
🤖 Autonomy News
Two big ones come from Lucid Motors this week: it will incorporate Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor computers and software for eventual “full autonomy with no interventions” on its upcoming midsize EV—a car you can own, not a robotaxi. [InsideEVs]
Lucid, Uber, and Nuro will also launch their first Gravity autonomous taxis in the Bay Area in 2026. [The Verge]
And speaking of Uber: it also just signed a deal with Nvidia, Foxconn and Stellantis to develop a fully autonomous robotaxi. Uber plans to roll out 100,000 robotaxis, beginning in 2027. [Detroit News]
Waymo’s next big test: operating in the snow. [The Verge]
🧠 AI News
Cruise robotaxi founder Kyle Vogt is in the robotics game with The Bot Company, now eying a $4 billion valuation. [Bloomberg]
Speaking of Nvidia: here’s how its AI and computing power is speeding up automotive design and engineering. [Nvidia]
A majority of car dealers are still just “testing the waters” with AI. [Car Dealership Guy]
Renault’s Renew used car brand used AI to create and update content about its entire used stock, driving “a 20.5% increase in used vehicle inquiries, a 29.5% jump in transactions, and a doubling of conversion rates.” [AI Journal]
📤 Spread the Charge
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❓ How’s My Driving?
This is a work in progress, so all feedback is welcome. Send me your thoughts anytime.
💡 Did You Know?
The first mass-market electric car to offer bidirectional charging was the 2013 Nissan Leaf, which could power a home or feed energy back to the grid. Its CHAdeMO charging port, largely obsolete today, had this capability from the jump.
Until next time,
—Patrick George