WeaveGrid reposted this
Imagine if right now we only had electric vehicles and someone pitched you on a new type of car: "It makes way more noise. Has 300 parts instead of 150, so maintenance costs more. It produces a polluting exhaust that reduces air quality. And here's the best part - you can't charge it at home. You have to drive somewhere special to fill it up with a smelly liquid that is corrosive." You'd never switch. I love Rory Sutherland's videos where his thought experiment reveals how we've framed EVs wrong from the start. We compare them to internal combustion engines instead of evaluating them as a new category: EVs are an energy storage solution that happens to provide transportation. The implications of that difference become clear in usage patterns. Your car sits idle 95% of the time, and that battery could power your home during peak hours, offset your electricity costs, and support grid stability. The technology for vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) already exists. The economics already work. Yet almost nobody's car is charging their house. Why? Because two industries need to collaborate in ways they never have before: utilities manage grid stability for millions of customers, and automakers engineer safety systems for global supply chains. Both move slowly by design because regulatory frameworks mean mistakes black out cities or shut down production lines. The willingness to collaborate exists, but execution takes time when safety and reliability cannot be compromised. We’re starting to drive this change through our investment in WeaveGrid, and other OEMs have joined in to help the entire industry scale faster. We’re starting with Smart Charging, then V2H, then eventually V2G. The ideal path forward requires geographic validation first. Bigger, slower-moving industries need real-life examples before committing to major infrastructure changes. California, Texas, and New York move faster on energy innovation, making them natural proving grounds. Successful deployments in these markets are starting to create templates that other regions could adopt with less risk. But scaling the larger vehicle-to-grid economy faces real barriers that won't resolve quickly: ❌ Infrastructure buildout lacks clear funding sources, and nobody agrees on who should pay ❌ Political divisions around climate policy complicate deployment timelines ❌ Dealerships fear losing repair revenue as EVs require fewer parts, while consumers worry about the cost of eventual battery replacement But these obstacles persist because we're still framing the problem wrong. Instead of "how do we make EVs work like gas cars?" we need to ask "how do we design systems around energy storage that moves?" The answer sits in your driveway 95% of the time, waiting to do more than take you from point A to point B.