EVs may become personal power plants for owners

The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago

Electric vehicles push lots of emotional buttons, for those so inclined. There’s the thrill of instant acceleration, the ego boost of feeling like the cool kid on the block and the smug sense of being on the right side of climate change history.

But America’s new generation of electric pick-up trucks takes this intoxication to a new level. The Ford F-150 Lightning — the electric version of America’s bestselling vehicle — can power a home for three days in a hurricane, or a remote job site complete with power tools.

EV pick-up owners boast that it’s like having an emissions-free, onboard generator: multiple power outlets can blow up an air mattress, fry bacon, make coffee and run the air conditioning on camping trips. One owner of a Rivian used his truck to power the sound system for an off-the-grid 150-person wedding, while in Texas a urologist performed what he said was the world’s first Rivian-powered vasectomy.

Some owners say they love the personal power plant as much as the powertrain — but energy experts say these are not just fun features. Electric vehicles could be rigged to give power back to America’s troubled electric grid, not just take it. At a time when many worry that electric car charging will strain the faltering grid, utilities and car companies say they could be part of the solution. EV truck owners could even make money by selling power back to the grid at peak hours for more than they paid when charging them overnight.

The Natural Resources Defense Council says this is not science fiction: it calculates that California could power every home in the state for three days, if every battery-electric car it plans to put on the road by 2035 was also feeding power directly into the grid.

Matthias Preindl, Columbia University associate professor of electrical engineering, says he dreams of a day when EVs could act as back-up energy storage facilities. For a limited time, they could together “supply more electric power than all conventional power plants combined” — and with fewer emissions than the peak power plants currently used to respond to extreme demand.

First, of course, the US must put more EVs on the road — or, more accurately, in driveways, where most cars spend 95 per cent of their time anyway. More models are being launched all the time: GM’s electric Silverado pick-up, with models promising 400 to 450 miles of range, will be available this year. Most experts estimate only 1 per cent of all US vehicles on the road are electric, but sales are rising rapidly: the International Energy Agency says EV sales in the US rose 55 per cent last year to a share of 8 per cent.

Westley Ferguson, 33, is helping fuel that rise. Like many EV pick-up buyers he had never owned an EV or a truck before — Ford chief executive Jim Farley often says most Lightning buyers are new to pick-ups. Ferguson told me by phone that he wanted an EV “because investing in a gas vehicle felt like investing in the past and this felt like investing in the future”.

He and his wife took delivery of his $67,000 Ford F-150 Lightning shortly before his Florida home lost power for three days in Hurricane Ian last year. Westley ran extension cords out to the truck, draining about 10 per cent of the battery each day by running refrigerator, lights, fan, television, electric ring, record player and speakers. They later used the truck to inflate an airbed, cook dinner and run the cabin air conditioning while camping overnight to nab a ringside seat for a rocket launch — all for 3-5 per cent of the truck’s battery.

Brian Calbeck, 35, a Google engineer who tells me he “geeks out” on how his Rivian R1T “uses, stores and reuses energy”, rigged it to run the sound system at a remote family wedding last year. He says he will be the “first one to sign up” when vehicle-to-grid charging is a reality in his home state of California — but only if utilities can get the pricing right.

With thousands of power utilities operating in the US, and many stakeholders whose interests must align, I’m not sure electric vehicles will be helping power the grid in my lifetime. For the moment, I’ll settle for blowing up the air mattress and saving the frozen meat in a heatwave. That’s the EV lifestyle for me.