Vehicle to Everything (V2X) is often used as an umbrella term to describe leveraging the energy in an electric vehicle’s battery to send to the grid (vehicle-to-grid, V2G), to a home (vehicle-to-home, V2H), to a commercial building (vehicle-to-build, V2B) and to power tools, appliances and other devices (vehicle-to-load, V2L).
The concept of vehicle-to-grid has been around for many years based on the bi-directional charging capability of the CHAdeMO charging connected and most notably, the Nissan LEAV battery electric vehicle (BEV). However, in the US V2G/V2B/V2H has not advanced beyond various pilot projects due to everything from the reticence of utilities to enable bi-directional power, the need for bi-directional chargers, inverters, and grid shut offs (for V2B and V2H). There are several pilot projects with electric school buses (V2G) and local governments (V2B) underway in the US, but the big game changer for this technology is doing to be the launch of the Ford F-150 Lightning in late Spring 2022.
A second and related area is “smart charging” which generally entails EV drivers giving their utility to control over when their EV will charge. This enables the utility spread out energy use to lower demand periods to reduce the load on the grid and need to, for example, fire up peaker plants to supply increased demand.
Following are some of the companies involved in the V2X market:
