GM believes electric vehicles can help offset AI energy absorption through vehicle-to-grid technology

At an event today in San Francisco, GM made a series of announcements about electric vehicle batteries, energy storage, and grid resilience in the face of global challenges. Increased demand for electricity from artificial intelligence data centers. The automaker announced that it will activate new vehicle-to-grid capabilities for its existing electric vehicle and home energy customers. It launches a new commercial energy storage system strategy, based on newly developed sodium-ion batteries for industrial-scale grid applications. It is launching a new feature for electric car owners that it says will help simplify public charging.

Right now, millions of electric cars sit idle in driveways across the country with a wealth of electrons stored in their batteries. GM is betting that even as electric vehicle sales decline, utilities will want to work with automakers to leverage electric vehicle batteries as a potential solution to the energy demand crisis they face. It was also the latest effort by North America’s largest automaker to grab a piece of the multibillion-dollar energy generation and storage market, something it has been trying to do for nearly four years now.

“We see a future where electric vehicles, the batteries that power them, and the nation’s power grids work together,” Sterling Anderson, GM’s chief product officer, said in prepared remarks for today’s event.

Electric vehicles have the ability to put power back into the grid, just as they draw it while charging. Many electric vehicles are designed with bidirectional charging technology, allowing power to flow in both directions. In essence, it treats high-capacity lithium-ion batteries not only as tools to power electric vehicles but also as backup storage cells to charge other electrical devices, the entire home, or even to send power to the electrical grid for potential energy savings.

As artificial intelligence data centers put more pressure on the grid, GM believes its hundreds of electric vehicles can help ease the burden. The automaker says that thanks to bi-directional charging capabilities, electric vehicles can send power back to the grid during times of peak demand. As such, the automaker says it will release a firmware update to give customers of its existing vehicle-to-home system the ability to send power back to the grid (vehicle-to-grid, or V2G). GM customers who already own the equipment will automatically receive the update.

GM says there is currently More than 250,000 Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC electric vehicles with two-way capability On American roads today. In theory, the combined battery capacity is enough to power 120,000 homes for up to a full week.

GM is already testing this theory in two states. In Northern California, the company is collaborating with PG&E to develop a local fleet of 52,000 electric vehicles for “grid balancing protocols,” which it says will be operational by 2030. And in Michigan, GM is working with DTE Energy on a “stress test” of two-way charging using 30 of its employees’ homes as real-world test cases. In addition to providing a benefit to utilities, the automaker says EV owners could see a financial windfall as well.

“By injecting flexibility into a historically rigid system, V2G technology can simultaneously reduce overall energy costs, create a potential financial return for the consumer, and enhance the systemic reliability of the broader grid,” Anderson said.

But enabling V2G isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. In an open letter, GM Energy Vice President Wade Schaefer urged regulators to formalize V2G infrastructure, citing International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that identify V2G as the technology with the greatest hourly flexibility to limit future grid investment costs. Schiffer said the auto industry needs to work with the government to educate the public about the benefits of V2G technology. Utilities must streamline the administrative process to allow their customers to seamlessly sign up for future projects.

GM says it is also working on new industrial-scale solutions, partnering with New York-based Peak Energy to develop and deploy sodium ion chemistry for energy storage systems. Sodium is viewed by some as an improvement over lithium, both in terms of availability and stability. This material is more cost-effective and is not subject to the same safety risks as lithium, which can ignite under certain conditions. They also perform better in cold weather than Li-ion batteries. Some major battery manufacturers, such as China’s CATL, believe sodium-ion batteries could replace up to half of the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery market that now dominates the field.

GM says sodium-ion chemistry is well-suited for commercial energy storage, but not necessarily electric vehicles, because it prioritizes “longevity, high cycle and calendar life, and extreme cost-effectiveness.” The automaker is too Working with redwood materials To build energy storage from US-manufactured batteries, as well as “second-life” EV packages from GM vehicles. For its electric car batteries, GM is betting on manganese-rich lithium batteriesor LMR, to bridge the gap between the United States and China.

Finally, GM announced Energy Pass, a new feature that will appear across its suite of mobile apps. Energy Pass allows Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC EV owners to find, start, and pay for charging across several third-party charging operators, including Tesla, Electrify America, and IONNA. (The company says it also plans to add EVgo and ChargePoint.) Owners can now use its mobile app to find a charger, start a charging session, and pay for charging without having to sign up for a separate account for each provider.

The lack of convenient and reliable charging is frequently cited in customer surveys as a major barrier to purchasing an electric vehicle. GM uses Tesla’s NACS charging standard For its future vehicles, the company’s superchargers are widely viewed as among the best electric vehicle charging networks in the world.

GM has recently been trying to expand its electric vehicle business to include a variety of energy storage and charging projects. The company launched General Motors Energyits energy subsidiary, in 2022 as a way to compete in the rapidly expanding home energy market. In an attempt to compete with Tesla in the $150 billion home energy market, General Motors is selling Number of productsincluding home electric vehicle chargers, stationary home batteries, and Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) collections. Which enables the home to draw power from the electric car battery in the event of a power outage.