The future of the forecourt petrol station is, well, it hasn’t got one. And want to know what will be powering your home in the future? It’ll be your car. This is the vision of Nissan, the Japanese carmaker, which is the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. The company has joined with two energy giants to map out a future in which not only is the battery-powered car mainstream, it will earn money as a part-time power source. In a radical rethinking, Nissan’s new joint venture partners, Enel, the Italian energy group, and National Grid, of Britain, regard the car as a mobile energy storage facility — a battery on wheels. The idea is that if you are not using your electric car to get somewhere in an environmentally friendly way, it can be used as the ultimate localised power station. Rather than lying idle, the family electric car and its battery can fill up with cheap energy during the night-time, off-peak usage period through the home or streetside charging point. It can then be used to power the home when households are usually consuming peak-price electricity.
Times 11th May 2016 read more »