Ford Has A Bidirectional EV Charging Trick Up Its Sleeve

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It seems like only yesterday that Ford Motor Company was all in on electric vehicles. Well, that was then. Today, good old-fashioned gasmobiles and hybrid gas-electric vehicles are the name of Ford’s game, along with a massively expanded interest in the energy storage industry. Like, massively expanding. For some insights into the energy storage angle, let’s turn to a newly released EV-to-home charging study produced by Ford and the University of Michigan.

Farewell, Ford, We Hardly Knew Ye … Or Did We?

CleanTechnica’s Steve Hanley has a good explainer on Ford’s new EV about-face and its forthcoming energy storage plans (here’s another CleanTechnica take on the subject). The new study, published in the journal Nature Energy, adds another dimension to the automaker’s energy storage plans under the title, “Vehicle-to-home charging can cut costs and greenhouse gas emissions across the USA.”

Does Ford have 3-D chess flowing through its veins? Maybe! Despite the company’s U-turn on EVs, the new study makes a strong economic case for owning an electric vehicle. It reads like a big, fat raspberry blown at the insane, braying jackass who currently occupies the White House.

In a nutshell, the study presents evidence that households with an EV can deploy their car battery to save money on their electricity bills — enough money to offset the cost of charging an EV, and then some.

According to the Ford-University of Michigan team, the savings on EV charging costs can add up to a range of $2,400 to $5,600 over time. That’s not quite enough to make up for the recent loss of the $7,500 EV tax credit engineered by US President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, but it does take some of the sting out.

“We know that vehicles are parked the vast majority of the time and, so as this infrastructure develops, there’s a great opportunity here,” emphasizes Ford researcher and study co-author Robb De Kleine.

“As we try to decarbonize the grid, we need energy storage to be able to do that. A lot of the time, the first instinct is to build stationary storage. But EVs could serve as electricity storage devices,” De Kleine elaborates.

The New EV Energy Storage Study

Don’t get too excited just yet. As De Kleine indicates, the research team advises that vehicle-to-home EV charging technology will need to level up its game before the full savings can be realized.

“Ultimately, the goal is that drivers won’t have to change anything—they would park and plug in their EVs as normal, then technology running in the background automatically finds the best charging and discharging times,” explains Ford research scientist Hyung Chul Kim, who also co-authored the new study.

Kim emphasizes that V2H (vehicle-to-home) charging needs to have plug-and-play capability, which it does not yet have in the US. “This capability is promising but still in its early stages,” Kim emphasizes.

“We’re working with utilities to identify the best use cases for them, and we’re also determining ways to optimize overall battery lifetime,” Kim adds.

How Does It Work?

That’s … interesting! I’m reaching out to Ford to see if any details are available on their utility partnerships. In the meantime, the new study offers some clues about the automaker’s future plans for energy storage, EVs, and both.

Parth Vaishnav, an assistant professor in the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, explained the general concept in a press statement on December 16.

“Putting vehicle batteries between the electricity grid and homes makes it possible for homes to buy electricity for all household uses when it is cheap and clean—for example, in the afternoon, when there is a lot of solar power—and to store it in the car’s battery for later use,” said Vaishnav.

The idea is not a particularly new one. Bi-directional EV charging is the foundational technology. EVs are essentially mobile energy storage systems on wheels. They can draw power from a home charging station, and — if equipped with bidirectional charging — they can also send electricity from their battery into the home.

What is new is the potential for seamlessly integrating bidirectional charging and energy storage with real time information about electricity costs and the availability of renewable energy on the grid.

The results vary by region, taking into account prevailing electricity rates and seasonal conditions among other factors. “In parts of Texas and California, the cost savings of V2H compared to conventional charging can be so great that it more than pays for the electricity needed for driving,” the University of Michigan notes.

Saving The Planet, One Mobile Energy Storage System At A Time

The University of Michigan also emphasizes that the greenhouse gas savings adds up when the energy storage capabilities of EVs are optimized by V2H charging. “V2H could reduce lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from a household’s electricity use by 70 to 250%, which would amount to cutting between 24 and 57 tons of lifetime carbon dioxide emissions,” the school explains.

“The reduction can surpass 100% when it more than makes up for emissions from the extra electricity needed to drive the car,” Vaishnav adds.

“If you’re buying an EV because you want to cut greenhouse gas emissions—or if you’re making an EV because you want to cut greenhouse gas emissions—this tells you that, in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport, the EV could also help cut building sector greenhouse gas emissions,” Vaishnav adds again for good measure.

That’s also interesting. While greenhouse gas emissions are not top of mind for budget-strapped households, they continue to factor into business decisions. Regardless of the sharp sideways turn in federal climate policy, surveys continue to show that the interest in carbon-reducing technologies among US businesses remains strong — outside of the fossil fuel industry, that is.

In that regard, the new survey provides fleet owners with another compelling, bottom-line case for fleet electrification. The researchers also point out that their findings can be useful to the construction industry as well, by providing stakeholders with guidance on the value of equipping homes for V2H charging around different regions of the US.

Next Steps For The EV Revolution

As for Ford … don’t shoot the messenger. Up through the end of the Joe Biden administration, things were humming along on the EV side for Ford and other US automakers. It’s too bad that the US electorate decided to send a credibly accused rapist and convicted felon back into the White House on Election Day 2024, but that’s not on Ford. That’s on the sum and total of eligible voters who sent Donald J. Trump back into the Oval Office again, whether they voted for him directly, voted for a third party, or failed to vote at all.

If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the comment thread….

Photo: Not too long ago, Ford was hyping the electric F-150 Lightning Supertruck as the face of its EV lineup, and now it’s all about energy storage (cropped, courtesy of Ford Motor Company).