| Thanks for reading Hyperdrive, Bloomberg’s newsletter on the future of the auto world. Tapping EVs as Power Sources | China is rolling out a pilot program to see if it can eventually hook up millions of electric vehicles to the national electricity grid to become sources of energy, rather than just power-hungry users. The large-scale tests, backed by China’s top economic planning agency and energy regulator, is key to the world’s largest auto market alleviating worries around energy security as the pace of battery-powered car adoption soars. China’s fleet of EVs alone used the equivalent amount of electricity that Sweden as a whole consumed in 2024, according to BloombergNEF. More than 11 million EVs were sold last year, accounting for around 45% of new-vehicle sales. If Beijing can successfully make EVs an energy source — feeding power back into the grid at times of high demand — it will have major global implications for the standards of vehicle-to-grid (V2G), or bi-directional, charging technology. Offering financial incentives to people sending power back to the grid also could further boost EV adoption, while helping the case for renewable energy to ease the reliance on oil and gas. “There’s a big economic opportunity there,” says Alan Jenn, an electric-car expert at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. “There are players figuring out the economics trying to capture the value.” The initial batch of 30 electric bi-directional EV charging projects was announced by the National Development and Reform Commission at the start of this month. Trials will also harness so-called smart charging that, along with EVs storing power and deploying energy back into the grid, can mean charging up at quieter periods of electricity demand. The national push is intended to accelerate development of the technology after earlier experiments, which largely had been pushed by companies and with limited local backing.  An EV charging in Wuhan. Source: Bloomberg In fact, Chinese automakers have been exploring V2G applications for at least five years. As early as 2020, Dongfeng Motor and State Grid, the world’s largest utility company, partnered to integrate EV infrastructure into green power trading and to advance V2G adoption. In 2021, BYD and Levo Mobility announced a collaboration in which the latter promised to acquire up to 5,000 V2G-enabled BYD commercial vehicles within a five-year timeframe. “You need both sides of the coin,” Jenn said. “People who did research on transportation didn’t think of the power sector. Now there is a big intersection, both of these groups having to talk to each other.” BMW and California’s state power producer PG&E have been testing out vehicles feeding power back into the grid for almost a decade. Their program gives BMW drivers cash incentives to charge at off-peak hours when there’s more renewable energy available. Kai Li Lim, the St. Baker Fellow in E-Mobility at the University of Queensland in Australia, sees the potential to harness idle battery power. “It’s so important because when you have one car, it doesn’t really matter with a battery of 60 kilowatt hours, but if you were to spread that out — in China’s case, to hundreds of millions of cars — then that’s going to be a very big deal.” With tens of millions of electric and plug-in hybrid cars on China’s roads, it’s the best test case. The nation’s power system is also large enough to support the discharging of millions of EVs, and can do so at levels economical enough to attract drivers to participate, according to a recent BNEF analysis. BNEF notes China’s tests will need to examine specific urban challenges, such as the country’s high-rise residential towers, and usually insufficient parking that make the challenge of bi-directional charging tricky to trial. Modeling by BNEF found a maximum scenario of as many as 25% of EVs discharging into the grid, earning their owners more than $1,100 a year. However, getting that many drivers to participate in V2G would still be difficult, given challenges such as high concentrations of vehicles charging in the day and discharging at night, BNEF said. A more likely scenario is getting around 10% of drivers to send energy back into the grid, BNEF said. The University of Queensland’s Lim sees China playing a bellwether role. “If China is able to push toward a national standard and incentivize consumers, that’s going to be the catalyst for the world,” he said. “That’s going to be quite exciting.”  New Jeep vehicles displayed for sale at a dealership in Miami. Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg David Kelleher is so worried about the trade war tanking sales at his Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram store outside Philadelphia, he’s filming TV spots to try to calm potential buyers. “Tariffs. Are you confused yet?” the 58-year-old Massachusetts native asks, sitting in front of an olive-green Jeep Wrangler. “I know I have about 400 cars in stock and on the way that are completely untariffed,” he says, going on to add, “I know when the tariffs do hit, it’ll have a minimal effect on my clients, because most of my cars are built in the United States.” Off camera, Kelleher is concerned. If his pre-tariff inventory runs out and Trump’s levies stick around, that could translate into higher sticker prices and slower sales, he says. That, in turn, could force him to order fewer cars, stymieing auto production and eventually costing jobs, even at his dealership, which employs 96 people. “I’m really going to slow down my ordering in a big way on those vehicles that are affected,” he says. “Ford, GM, Chrysler, we deal with middle-class customers, and the only thing they’re concerned about is what their payment is.” | 
