Nissan Teams Up With Ford, BMW, And Honda In EV-Grid Joint Venture

It’s tough to imagine a world where EV owners would be willing to give up some of their precious energy, especially with the long queue that likely awaits them at their local charge station, if they even have a local station, and few would be on board with sending energy back to the grid. In fact, scenes of Mad Max, albeit with extension cords, rather than hubcaps overflowing with old gas, are more in tune with how many perceive modern EV ownership.

Nissan, however, disagrees, and feels that there are plenty of EVs out there sitting on a full tank that isn’t being used, or piloted by someone that doesn’t need to charge their vehicle during peak times when the power grid is taxed. That’s why the Japanese manufacturer has chosen to join a trio of other automakers in a joint venture to ease grid usage when necessary and actually extract power from participating EV end user’s vehicles.

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ChargeScape, which was established last year and just started operations in September, initially consisted of BMW, Ford, and Honda, but now welcomes Nissan into the group as a 25% investor to round out the joint venture. It’s a major move for a project that already had legs based on the trio of auto industry heavy hitters and, now, with its latest team member, has only increased its profile. Nissan is an ideal investor as they’ve sold over 650,000 of their fully-electric LEAF models since its introduction in late 2010.

The idea for the program is based around software which is owned and operated by the four auto brands and intended to help bridge the transportation side of electric power and utilities. A major issue that isn’t touched on nearly enough is that with such a strong push for EVs, the power grid can become compromised, especially at times when certain regions use substantially more electricity than usual. ChargeScape’s software would help by pulling back on EV charging when the power grid is overworked and even sending power back to the grid when deemed necessary, which is something the LEAF is capable of.

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Money For Power

Why on earth would anyone hand over their EV’s power? Money, of course. Owners can earn incentives by having their charging sessions managed and scheduled, based on the power grid’s needs, and, at times, vehicle-to-grid technology would allow them to essentially sell their power. It might not sound like much power coming from a little Nissan LEAF, but multiply that action by thousands and the impact could be significant, especially in areas with high electricity usage. Not every EV can do this as not all have bidirectional charging, including Tesla models, except for the Cybertruck.

The ChargeScape software is the key to making it all work in that it can monitor charging information for a given area and relay the analytics to the utility companies to initiate various protocols to limit charging or request energy from participants. Additional info, including insights into consumption rates and peak demand info would further assist in controlling turning the faucet on or shutting it off. While some cringe at the thought of sharing more info with a third party, others are likely to jump on board in light of those incentives, which haven’t been defined just yet.