Electric vehicles need big batteries. In fact, their batteries so big that they can power your home. Moving forward, all consumer-oriented GM vehicles based on the company’s Ultium electric platform will be able to do just that.
The automaker announced today that bidirectional charging will be expanded to every Ultium-based retail vehicle it sells by the 2026 model year. However, several vehicles will get it before then.
GM previously announced that the 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV RST will come with the technology, and it will be the first vehicle to offer it to buyers. The truck will be followed by the 2024 GMC Sierra EV Denali Edition 1, the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, the 2024 Equinox, the 2024 Cadillac Lyriq, and the Escalade IQ, which is set to be revealed tomorrow.
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“GM Energy’s growing ecosystem of energy management solutions will help accelerate GM’s vision of an all-electric future by further expanding access to even more benefits that EVs can offer,” said Wade Sheffer, vice president, GM Energy. “By integrating V2H across our entire Ultium-based portfolio, we are making this groundbreaking technology available to more consumers, with benefits that extend well beyond the vehicle itself, and at broader scale than ever before.”
Although it’s nifty, vehicle-to-home (V2H) technology isn’t really new. The technology already allows competitors like Ford’s F-150 Lightning to power a home during a blackout, for example.
But the technology has greater promise than just helping when the grid is down. It can also help power a home when electricity is expensive, or vehicle owners could potentially use their vehicles as batteries to store solar and wind power over the course of a day, in order to use it at night, when it’s not being generated.
General Motors plans to help owners manage all of their energy needs with its Ultium Home offerings and the “GM Energy Cloud,” a software program that helps control energy flow from the vehicle to the house and back again.
The automaker stated that it will disclose additional details about its V2H technology, including the timing of the release of individual models, at a later date.