Volkswagen aims to bolster its foray into electrified vehicles with new business opportunities in storing and managing electricity, delving into an area of business that has so far been dominated by energy and utilities companies, Volkswagen chief strategist Michael Jost told Reuters.
Batteries in electric vehicles could be used to stabilise the energy grid by recharging in times of excess supply and selling electricity back to the grid when supply from wind and solar power are reduced, Jost said. “By 2025 we will have 350 GWh worth of energy storage at our disposal through our electric car fleet. Between 2025 and 2030 this will grow to 1 terawatt hours worth of storage,” he said.
This will be more energy than is currently generated by all the hydroelectric power stations in the world, Jost said, and guaranteed that the energy will be used and stored and become a new area of business. Consumers whose cars generate the electricity to be fed back into the grid could be paid for recharging the grid, though Volkswagen may also take a share of profit; it remains to be seen how the revenue will be split.
Volkswagen isn’t the sole automaker in developing vehicle-to-grid capabilities; German utility firm E.ON has been working with Nissan for their own vehicle-to-grid (V2G) electricity supply services, such as with the second-generation Leaf EV.
Volkswagen’s own fully electric vehicle efforts are led by the ID.3, which was unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show last September. It has been slated to go on sale in the Northern Hemisphere summer, though ongoing software issues may force a delay, according to Manager Magazin last month.
GALLERY: Volkswagen ID.3
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A very interesting business model. Germany has a lot of windmills, which sometimes produce too much electricity. Then, the “green” electricity has to be discharged to foreign countries for free (or even at a cost). To use all EV’s as a big battery would make sense in that scenario.