GM thinks EVs can help offset the power of AI and grid-car technology

At an event in San Francisco today, General Motors made a series of announcements about EV batteries, energy storage, and grid resilience before the increasing demand for electricity from AI data centers. The automaker announced that it will introduce a new vehicle-to-grid technology for its current EV customers as well as home energy customers. It is releasing a new way to store energy, based on newly developed sodium-ion batteries to use the electric grid. And it’s introducing a new feature for EV owners that it says will help reduce public charging.

Right now, millions of EVs are sitting idle on highways across the country with plenty of electrons stored in their batteries. GM is betting that even if EV sales decline, charities will want to work with automakers to use EV batteries as a solution to the energy shortage they face. It was also the latest effort by North America’s largest automaker to capture a share of the multibillion-dollar energy and storage market, something it has been trying to do for nearly four years now.

“We envision a future where electric vehicles, the batteries that power them, and the nation’s power grid work together,” GM CEO Sterling Anderson said in a statement prepared for today’s event.

EVs are unique in their ability to send power to the grid, as they draw power while charging. Most EVs are built with this dual exhaust system, allowing power to flow in two directions. In fact, it uses advanced lithium-ion batteries not only as equipment for EVs but also as storage cells to charge other electronic devices, the whole house, or even send energy to the power grid to save energy.

As AI data centers put more stress on the grid, GM thinks hundreds of electric vehicles could help reduce the load. The manufacturer says that with charging power, EVs can send power into the grid during times of peak demand. As such, the automaker says it will release a firmware update to allow its customers who have a car to go home to be able to send power to the grid (vehicle-to-grid, or V2G). GM customers who own the kit will receive the update automatically.

GM says he is there now Over 250,000 Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC EVs on American roads today. In fact, their combined battery power is enough to power 120,000 homes for up to a full week.

GM is already testing this theory in two countries. In Northern California, the company is partnering with PG&E to build a fleet of 52,000 EVs for “grid balancing protocols,” which it says will be operational by 2030. And in Michigan, GM is working with DTE Energy to “stress test” bidirectional chargers using 30 of the actual cases of its employees. In addition to providing value for public goods, the automaker says EV owners can also see a recession.

“By injecting flexibility into a sustainable system, V2G technology can simultaneously lower electricity costs, create economic benefits for consumers, and increase grid reliability,” Anderson said.

But enabling V2G technology is not as simple as flipping a switch. In an open letter, GM Energy Vice President Wade Sheffer urged regulators to install V2G equipment, citing reports from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that identify V2G as a technology that has the most flexibility in an hour to reduce future grid costs. Sheffer said the auto industry should work with the government to educate the public about the benefits of V2G technology. And utilities should simplify the process to allow their customers to sign up for future services.

GM says it is also working on new industrial solutions, partnering with New York-based Peak Energy to develop and use sodium ion chemistry for energy storage systems. Sodium is considered by some as an alternative to lithium, in terms of availability and stability. The material is relatively inexpensive to obtain and does not have the same safety hazards as lithium, which can sometimes catch fire. They also perform better in cold weather than Li-ion batteries. Some major battery manufacturers, such as China’s CATL, believe that sodium-ion batteries could replace up to half of the market for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that currently dominate the field.

GM says sodium ion chemistry is suitable for commercial energy storage, but not EVs, because it prioritizes “long life, long life and calendar, and high cost.” The automaker too work with Redwood Materials to produce energy storage from US-made batteries, and “second-life” EV packs from GM vehicles. For its EV batteries, GM is betting on heavy lithium manganese batteriesor LMR, to close the gap between the US and China.

Finally, GM announced Energy Pass, a new feature that will appear on its mobile apps. Energy Pass allows Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC EV owners to access, start, and charge charging stations from a number of third-party providers, including Tesla, Electrify America, and IONNA. (The company says it also plans to add EVgo and ChargePoint.) Owners can now use their mobile app to find a charger, start a charging station, and make payments without registering a separate account for each provider.

A lack of convenient and reliable charging is frequently cited in customer surveys as a major barrier to purchasing an EV. GM is using it Tesla’s NACS charger standard of its future vehicles, as the company’s Supercharger is seen as one of the best EV networks in the world.

GM has recently been trying to expand its EV business to include different types of energy storage and charging services. The company was started GM Energyits energy, in 2022 as a way to compete in the rapidly growing energy market. In order to compete with Tesla in the $150 billion home electric market, GM sells several productsincluding EV home chargers, stationary home batteries, and vehicle-to-home (V2H) devices which allows the home to draw power from the EV battery if it is off.