Vehicle To Grid

Connected And Networked Electric Vehicles Have The Potential To Make EVs Viable Without Huge Incentives.

Fans of the normal-car-as-EV style of the Coda Sedan, you've been warned. What we have here is the AirRay, a totally unusual vehicle that (theoretically, at least) uses solar, wind and plug-in power to decrease gasoline consumption. It's also a little bit crazy.

Chrysler U.S. Postal Service Minivan - Click above for high-res image gallery

Ford Focus EV - Click above for high-res image gallery

Madison, Wisconsin is a fairly typical college town, a place with a fairly substantial population of people with progressive attitudes on many issues. That means it has more people who ride bikes, take the bus, walk and drive hybrids than some other surrounding areas. It's also easier to find plug-in vehicles in places like Madison than elsewhere. Madison Gas and Electric can see the writing on the wall and wants to be ready for the transition to electrification.

MINI E - click above for high-res image gallery

Newark, DE has gotten the green light for one of the first two-way Vehicle to Grid infrastructure. Sponsored by a $730,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the project helps the state and the University of Delaware to purchase specially-equipped cars (retrofitted versions of the Scion xB) which would get electricity from the local utility and give back some of it when the car is parked and plugged in. Of course, a handful of cars aren't enough to make any dramatic impact on the grid, bu

A pair of southeastern U.S. electric utilities will soon start testing a fleet of converted plug-in Toyota Priuses to evaluate a smart charging system. Duke Energy Carolinas and Progress Energy will be evaluating both cross utility charging and billing and vehicle-to-grid technology. The project will look at the issues of tracking energy usage and billing when a car that is subscribed to one company charges on another's network. Similarly, energy fed back to the grid from the cars will need to b

Tesla and PG&E have announced a partnership to research and develop vehicle to grid (V2G) technology. The focus of the research will be on Smart Charging. What's smart charging? If you don't know, let JB Straubel, Tesla's Chief Technology Officer explain:

The Sunday New York Times writes about the Prius powering someone's house and the future potential of V2G or vehicle to grid. A Honda (shouldn't that be Toyota?) spokesperson shot down plans for hybrids powering homes responding; "We would not like to see stresses on the battery pack caused by putting it through cycles it wasn't designed for." "Instead, they should buy a Honda generator that was made for that purpose."

Pacific Gas & Electric's Hal LaFlash recently sat down with Todd Woody of Green Wombat and Business 2.0 a preview of some of the new-tech and green-tech changes we can expect to see in California and the rest of the country. Here's the list: