Catalyst with Shayle Kann - The multi-billion dollar promise of vehicle-to-grid integration

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Most electric vehicles spend nearly all of their lives parked, doing nothing. But under the hood of those idle cars, a massive store of energy sits untapped. The Kia EV9, for instance, holds a 100-kilowatt-hour battery—which is equivalent to about seven home backup batteries—just waiting to be utilized. Yet despite this enormous potential, Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology has remained mostly limited to small-scale pilot programs for decades. But with advanced tech hitting the market, that could soon change. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Steve Letendre, senior advisor at the Vehicle-Grid Integration Council and editor of V2G News, to explore why the V2G revolution is finally moving from concept to reality. They break down the technical battle between AC and DC architectures, tackle the looming questions around battery degradation and warranties, and debate the business models that will finally convince everyday drivers to plug their cars back into the grid. Shayle and Steve discuss topics like: - The unused energy capacity hidden in parked EVs - The technical debate, cost trade-offs, and hardware differences between off-board power conversion (DC architecture) and on-board power conversion (AC architecture). - Current compatible EV options, including the Nissan Leaf, Tesla Cybertruck, Ford F-150 Lightning, and Kia EV9 - The high upfront cost of V2G systems - Consumers' fears regarding whether discharging power to the grid will ruin their EV batteries or void manufacturer warranties. - Streamlining the V2G enrollment process via VPP programs or at point-of-sale - How financing can unlock mass V2G adoption Resources Catalyst: Repurposing EV batteries for grid storage Catalyst: How China is reshaping the global auto market Catalyst: Enter the electric supercycle Latitude Media: Electric Era is turning its EV-charging tech into a data center power play Latitude Media: The future of optimized EV charging Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. This episode of Catalyst is brought to you by ENGIE, the smarter energy supplier. ENGIE doesn't just provide the power to run your business — they supply the energy to move it forward, with reliable, flexible solutions built for what's next. Learn more at ⁠engieresources.com⁠. Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. Peak season puts every grid to the test — and the utilities that pass are the ones that built flexible capacity before they needed it. EnergyHub works with more than 170 utilities to coordinate 2.5 million devices and 3.4 gigawatts of dispatchable flexibility through a single platform designed to perform when it counts most. See what that looks like at ⁠EnergyHub.com⁠.  Catalyst is brought to you by Bloom Energy. Bloom Energy fuel cells deliver affordable, ultra-reliable onsite power for hospitals, utilities, and data centers – at speed and at scale. Learn more by visiting⁠ ⁠⁠BloomEnergy.com⁠.

Latitude Media covering the new frontiers of the energy transition. I'm Shail Khan. I invest in early stage companies at energy impact partners. Welcome to Catalyst. So I drive a Kia EV-9. Most days, it sits in my garage with a hundred kilowatt-hour battery inside doing nothing. That's about seven power walls worth of storage from an energy capacity perspective, and it's sitting parked and idle. And I'm not unusual. An electric car in general spends 90. to 95% of its life doing exactly that. V to G, feeding that power back into the grid at times, has been the obvious answer to that waste for 30 years or something like that, and for 30 years it stayed mostly pilots. The standard explanation was always pretty similar. The cars

sometimes technically couldn't send power back. The hardware just wasn't there. But that excuse, at least, is running out quickly. Almost every major automaker is now shipping or is announced bidirectional models. Every cyber truck on the road can already export north of 11 kilowatts. Mine can do it too. GM says it alone has more than 250,000 bidirectional capable EVs on our roads. At about 10 kilowatts each, that's 2,500 megawatts of nameplate capacity. And that's one automaker. Which means we're about to run the real experiment. If the hardware is here and that capacity still doesn't show up on the grid, then the hardware wasn't really the thing standing in the way. What's left is arguably harder.

There is a question of warranties. Do they treat grid exports as off limits? Is it ambiguous? Is it clear? There are degradation fears that people have had about batteries that have to be overcome. The protocols maybe don't talk to each other. And the economics, I think, most importantly, have to close for the person who owns the car. GM, for example, their bidirectional charging bundle runs about $7,000 before installation.

And grid programs so far have paid drivers a lot less than that. It just doesn't pencil. It may be different for vehicle to home, V to H, where you're using it for backup power, but not so much for feeding it back into the grid. But again, that may be changing. My guest today is Steve Latender, who is the senior advisor at the Vehicle Grid Integration Council and the founder and editor of the newsletter V2GNews.com. We get into why this resource that's been sitting here growing for 30 years might finally

actually be arriving and delivering value and what still has to break its way. for that to happen. That's coming up next. Catalyst is brought to you by NG. Your business has enough challenges. Energy shouldn't be one of them. That's why NG builds tailored energy solutions around real business needs to support growth, strengthen predictability, and move businesses forward. Because real power comes from shared expertise and relationships that outlast the paperwork. Learn more at NG Resources.com. That's E N-G-I-E-N-G-E-N. NG Resources.com. In May and June alone, millions of thermostats, batteries, and EVs across North America

shifted energy during peak periods, quietly becoming one of the most powerful resources on the grid. Energy Hub builds and operates virtual power plants or VPPs that turn 2.5 million customer devices into 3.4 gigawatts of dispatchable capacity. That's the equivalent of more than three nuclear reactors' worth of flexible, clean, grid capacity, coordinated from customers' homes. Learn more at energy hub.com. For data center developers, power availability is the defining challenge, but it's not the only one.

Today, growth also hinges on earning a community's trust. Bloom Energy solves for both. Bloom's fuel cell platform delivers on-site power for the digital age, sustainable, reliable, and scalable from tens to hundreds of megawatts. Bloom generates electricity without combustion, meaning lower emissions, minimal water use, and quieter operation than conventional solutions. That's why developers and utilities turn to Bloom to power their operations, and you can learn more at bloomenergy.com. Steve, welcome. Thank you. Great to be here. All right, so we're going to talk to V2G. I want to start from the technical

perspective. What's actually required for a vehicle to discharge its battery into the grid? Yeah, there's three key components. The first is a bidirectional electric vehicle. It has a to have the ability to draw power from the battery and send it to buildings or to the grid. The second piece is you have to have a bidirectional charger that can both send power to the vehicle and can also receive power and send it through the charger back to buildings with the grid. And the third piece is you need some sort of software platform that manages and optimizes that power flow.

It responds to constraints that are established by the car. the owner of the EV to ensure that the vehicle is first and foremost providing the mobility services that the vehicle is purchased for from the consumer. So those three pieces. And we can take another level, particularly around where the conversion of the power from DC, we know we take DC power from a battery and we convert it to AC power for use in buildings in the grid. and there's two different flavors of architecture out there, and I'm happy to talk about that if you think that would be of interest. Yeah, let's do that. Talk about how you can configure it.

And then we'll talk about sort of like where we are today in terms of those, do we have those three things out in the wild and where? Yeah, absolutely. So there's what we call a DC and an AC architecture, and that really defines where the conversion, and a device called an inverter, which is a grid interactive inverter, it takes the DC power and converts it to AC. power, as I mentioned before. For the DC architecture, that conversion happens offboard the vehicle.

It's either in the charger or a wall box that's adjacent to the charger. So it's off board. So it's drawing DC power from the EV, converting it to AC power off board and sending it to the building or to the grid. And then the other flavor is V2GAC, and this is where their onboard conversion occurs. So the vehicle sends AC power from the vehicle to an AC bi-directional charger. And so just to give you a sense of where we are commercially, the Tesla-C-Truck V2G product is an AC architecture. So there's an onboard inverter capabilities, and the Ford F-150 and the GM suite of EVVs that have V2H in increasingly V2G

are based on that off-board V2G D.C architecture. Which partially explains, I think we'll talk about this more later, but it's much more expensive, as I understand it. You already have a cyber truck, or if you already have an F-150 Lightning, and you want to do V-2-G, it's going to be more expensive for you to do so on the F-150 Lightning because of what you need to purchase in addition to the vehicle

than it is on the cyber. Yeah, I should note that there's been quite a debate, in the industry, AC versus DC in terms of, you know, what are the advantages and disadvantages? And there is a pretty clear advantage to the AC architecture around costs that you mentioned. So for the DC architecture, the charging station has to be a DC charger, or it has to have, you know, that capability to convert offboard from DC to AC. And so that device, again, it's kind of early days. kind of limited production, but that device today is quite expensive.

And so the promise, as you noted, is with the V2G AC, the onboard conversion, you have a lower cost AC, a bi-directional charger, but there are costs that are then put onto the vehicle to have that grid interactive inverter onboard the vehicle, whereas the VTAG DC architecture, you don't have that additional cost of that grid-interactive inverter on the vehicle. That cost is off the vehicle in the charger or the wall box. In the medium and heavy duty space, one of the big markets for VDG is in the school bus space, and the VDG DC is the predominant architecture. There, we don't anticipate significant cost advantages from moving that larger platform to an AC architecture.

So I think the jury suggests that for residential light-duty vehicles that the VDG AC will offer likely a lower cost option for consumers. And so given that, like, why hasn't GM or Ford, why haven't they gone AC native? Is it that they're not like, they're not yet fully V to G native, you know? And it's sort of like, we want it to be an add-on, not endemic to the vehicle, or is it something else? Well, you know, that's a great question. I don't know that I have, you know, super great visibility into their internal decision-making processes, but one of the clear issues is around standards. The V2GAC UL standards literally just like a month ago were approved,

the UL 1741 FC, which is the safety standard for VDGAC systems. And so this is to comply with I-TRI-E, 1511-8-2018, which is the governance for interconnecting DER to the grid system. So until to date today, there wasn't really a approved standard for VDG AC, and now that's just very recently changed. There is another pathway for getting interconnection approval for V2GAC systems, which Tesla has pursued in some jurisdictions, and we can get into that as well.

So I think one of the issues were the standards weren't yet developed, and there perhaps was a simpler, more direct pathway for them to kind of do this at the DC architecture initially, but we are seeing companies, including, I think Ribian, has announced that they've got their R2 coming to market, which will be a VDG AC architecture with an onboard inverter. And there are other auto manufacturers as well that I think are seriously considering pivoting to that AC architecture. So that's a good segue. We've alluded to some of this.

We talked about the cyber truck. We talked about the F-150. We talked about GM generally, and then you just mentioned Rivian. But orient me, if I want, if I'm trying to buy a passenger vehicle and I want to do V2G today, like what are my suite of options and what does it look like for me to actually enable V2G on those options? Yeah. You know, Shail, the way to really think about it is a VDG system, which would include both the EV and the charger.

And then, you know, if the OEM is enabling full V2G capabilities, that will be part of kind of the software, the app that comes, you know, with your purchase. So today, when you think about, you know, what are the compatible EVs and bi-directional chargers on the market, you know, it's a fairly limited number of options. So when I, before I joined Vehicle Grid Integration Council as a senior advisor, I was working. for a company called Formata Energy, and we deployed dozens of bidirectional charging projects across the country using a Nissan Leaf, which was bidirectional when it was first introduced in 2015, and we had built our own bidirectional DC Charger based on the Chattamo platform, and so we were deploying those systems across the country. Of course, the Chattamo standard is now gone out of favor in the United States, and so the new offerings are based either on CCS or the NAC, the North American

charging standard. And so the Tesla system with the cyber truck is commercially available today with that full suite of the truck and their charging system. And then we've got kind of the OEM kind of packaged offerings, which is the Ford F-150 Lightning and their Ford Station Pro with the Sun Run box that does the conversion. Similarly, General Motors has a OEM branded charger. That's bi-directional capable, can do fuel V2G, and that's compatible with, I think, most of their electric vehicle offerings on the market today. And then aside from those kind of OEM-linked pairings,

there are also emerging partnerships between charger manufacturers and EV manufacturers. And one example of that would be Kia has partnered with Walbox, which is a Spanish charger manufacturer. And so the Kia EV-9 is compatible with the Wall. box charging system to do a full V2G capability. And then there's another company that we work with called Decibel, and they have a home energy station, which includes a bidirectional charger, and they have partnered with Volvo and Polestar

to have their systems be compatible with their EV. And so we expect that kind of pairing between different manufacturers, the EVs and charging stations to increase similarly, we'll see more OEMs have that kind of matched paired charging between the vehicle and the charger itself. So those are some examples of existing products on the market. And then, again, in the school bus space, most all of the school bus electric school buses that are coming off the lines are bi-directional capable, and there are now several higher power DC bi-directional chargers that are compatible with those school buses. So again, when you think about V2G, you want to think about light duty.

versus medium-heavy-duty, and what's happening in those two different segments. Right. So it seems like at the high level, I guess focusing on the passenger segment, you know, somewhat limited number of options today, but a bunch of options that are emerging or available, either directly through the OEM or through these partnerships or whatever. As usual, so are Tesla doing it all in-house and then a bunch of others sort of doing it through partnerships and so on. Let's talk about the economics, though. Does it make sense to do it? So walk me through the cost, I guess, first. And I know this, as we said before, this differs whether you have a cyber truck or whether you have something else.

But what is the upfront? What's the CAPEX of making yourself V2G capable? And then as it stands today, what does monetization look like? Yeah, I know that's a great question. It's the billion dollar question. And, you know, we are, again, early days, limited production. We're not manufacturing these chargers at scale. And so, you know, today, like a V2G DC system is going to be quite expensive around, you know, 8 to 10K for the full installation.

I don't have good numbers on the VDG AC. The belief is that that will be significantly shrink the cost differential between a unidirectional and a bidirectional charging system. So, you know, it's hard to say exactly what that differential is today. I would guess somewhere in, you know, the high hundreds to thousands or something, it's 1,000 to something in that range. So it is really, it's difficult to really pinpoint what that incremental cost is for bidirectional, given kind of the early stage of the industry and the limited deployments that we've seen nationally.

But one thing I think it's important to talk about is you talked about what's the value of having that bidirectional capability. So the only reason you would invest in a bidirectional charging system if there is some sort of value or opportunity to earn revenue from having that capability. And in that case, there are very limited opportunities across the country to actually monetize that bidirectional capability in terms of providing grid services. if you simply want to back up your home during an emergency, like, that's a value that exists today. And the alternative is buying like a whole home generator for your home.

Instead of spending that amount of money, whatever that would cost, you would invest in your home bi-directional charging system that would provide whole-home backup power. And my sense is that that's going to be very competitive cost relative to what it would cost to do a whole-home backup generator. And so it's a huge, important question about, you know, does the value cover the incremental cost of going bidirectional? I think for simply home backup power, the answer is likely, yes, it does. In terms of doing full V2G providing grid services, the question is, you know, where do utilities provide

compensation? What is the interconnection cost to participate in those programs? And we have seen in some jurisdictions where utilities are compensating resources for providing peak shaving in the 200 to 300 KW per season range, you know, for a 10KW bi-directional charging system, you could potentially earn, you know, $3,000 per year by providing that grid service in a demand response or some other type of grid services program, BPP programs that are merging out there. I mean, that's pretty compelling. If you can get that much and you have a 10 kilowatt system, then even at today's costs, which are pretty high outside of Tesla, you pay back in a few

years. I can imagine a lot of people doing that. Because until that last bit, my takeaway from what you said was sort of bullish V to H and bearish V to G. If you're using it for backup, V2A, that being V2H, then it makes a lot of sense because you can compare it against a whole home generator or maybe like a three power walls or whatever and then it's kind of compelling but if you're trying to do V2G the monetization opportunities aren't really there

but it sounds like you're saying when the monetization opportunities arrive when these utility programs arrive or if people are doing aggregated distributed capacity or whatever then there's enough juice in the revenue that you might pay back pretty quickly. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah and I think you

can think about like stacking the value of, you know, the home backup power value and stack that with, you know, the incremental value that you receive from providing grid services to the utility. And so what we've seen is both the Ford system and the GM system was originally marketed and sold for V2H. And then through a software upgrade, they were able to unlock the full V2G capability for those customers located in those utility service territories where there was a monetization opportunity. You know, we see you have opportunity in California and some utility programs, some pilot programs, Massachusetts, New York. We're seeing emerging opportunity in Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut. So, you know, I do think, you know, as you unlock that capability,

that there will be increasing opportunities for consumers to add to the value of their bidirectional charging system beyond the simple home emergency backup functionality. When it comes to energy, the best solutions don't start with a product. They start with understanding your business. NG works with customers to understand their goals, operations, and challenges before building solutions to their energy needs. Because while NG knows energy, no one knows your business like you. And because the work doesn't stop once the paperwork is signed, NG helps turn energy plans into outcomes. Learn more at NG Resources.com.

That's E-N-G-I-E-N-G Resources.com or click the link in the show notes. Peak temperatures don't have to mean peak prices. When summer heat drives demand up, utilities need flexible capacity they can call on in minutes while keeping customer rates down. That capacity starts in customers' homes. Energy hubs, Edge Germs, platform aggregates thermostats, batteries, and EVs into VPPs that grid operators can dispatch with the same confidence as a traditional power plant, with real-time performance, accurate forecasting, and end-to-end verification that holds up from

the control room to the living room. This peak season, more than 170 utilities are turning everyday devices into the grid's most responsive asset, exactly when the grid needs it most. Find out what utilities expect from a VPP partner at energy hub.com. When building a data center, the two hardest problems aren't technical. their speed to power and earning community support. And that's where Bloom Energy comes in. Bloom's fuel cell platforms deliver fast, reliable electricity without combustion. For local communities, installing a Bloom system means lower emissions,

minimal water use, and quieter operations compared to conventional solutions. The track record backs it up. For over 25 years, hospitals, universities, and utilities have trusted Bloom Energy to power communities where safety is top of mind. If you're building infrastructure where delays are, not an option and community support is key, your power choices matter. Visit bloomenergy.com to learn more or the link in the show notes. I want to get through some of the, like, the reasons that people have been skeptical of V to G

in the past, right? I think that the main ones, apart from the economics, is there enough value there, have largely been, will it degrade my battery? Is it going to break my warranty? sort of like, you know, logistical, I guess, considerations like that. How do you think about that set of things? What have we learned about that over time? Yeah, no, that's the first question I get whenever I'm at a conference.

You know, well, what about the battery and the warranties? And that's a real important consideration, very important. And, you know, I've got to say there's, it's quite a bit of gray area. Again, referencing the company I used to work at from Out of Energy, we actually worked very closely with Nissan, and Nissan actually publicly stated in their warranty that use of the Fermata Energy Charger and bi-directional charging platform would not impact the warranty on their product. So that was kind of the first, I think, in the nation in the world where an OEM said, yes, we're going to approve the use of this vehicle for bidirectional charging.

that hasn't, there hasn't been much beyond that other than Ford, I believe in their warranty, indicates that use of the F-150 for home backup power wouldn't avoid the warranty. So there is, you know, a lot of work to be done there in clarity among the OEMs to give consumers a confidence that if they use this capability, that it wouldn't avoid the warranty. And I've got to believe that given that they're bringing this capability, integrating into electric vehicles and marketing as such that that will have to mature, and the OEMs will have to explicitly come up with some parameters around what types of bi-directional charging uses would be acceptable under the existing warranty.

And I'm quite confident that we'll see some of that in the coming years. And there's been, I'm sure, as many of your listeners may know, there's been a rash of reports lately that's suggesting that ED batteries are lasting much longer than originally anticipated. And the other thing to note is that when you think about using an EV battery for traction in a vehicle, you've got 150, 125KW, whereas if you're using it for grid services, you know, you're using maybe 10KWs through the bi-directional charger. So the rate of discharge and the impact on the battery is less when you're discharging at a lower rate. relative to what you're actually doing when you're driving the vehicle, accelerating into traffic and whatnot.

What are you seeing in terms of the other thing that I think people have asked about historically is, okay, if I'm going to use my vehicle as backup for my home, I'm using it in this scenario wherein the grid is down. If the grid is down, I can't charge my vehicle either. And so I'm concerned about, you know, deploying all of my range, deploying all of my battery. My presumption is that in these programs in the software, you can sort of set parameters, say, I don't want my battery to go below whatever percent or something like that. How are you seeing the interaction between those types of settings that people are setting up and then relative to the value that that battery actually has, whether in a utility market program or just as whole home backup?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. There isn't a lot of good data out there. in terms of what consumers are placing in terms of limits on how the EV can be used for these programs. But I do think, you know, first and foremost, the EVE, as I mentioned at the beginning, is purchased for mobility, for transportation purposes. And so when it makes sense, when the vehicle is available and it doesn't restrict mobility, then that that vehicle could provide home backup power and could provide grid services. as appropriate.

And so, you know, I do think that any type of program does have to fundamentally preserve the mobility capabilities of the vehicle that it was purchased for. But when you think about, I mean, my EV sits in my garage. I work from home, you know, it sits in my garage for, you know, days at a time without ever being used. And I think there's other folks, you know, that it wouldn't make sense for where they're doing long commutes every day. I often talk about V2G as part of the sharing economy.

Not everyone chooses to use a personal vehicle to drive people from the airport to the hotel on the weekends through Uber, but there's enough people that are willing to do that with their lifestyle, their opportunity costs are such that it makes economic sense for them to do that. And again, not everyone is going to participate in V2G programs, but if even a fraction of the ED owners who have the interest and the opportunity costs, which makes sense for them, then that could represent a significant resource for the grid. And really, you know, as I'm sure, again, your listeners know, the grid is facing multiple challenges around load growth, affordability,

and EVs, I think, can be a real important part of that affordability. equation by using the grid more efficiently and managing how we charge vehicles and then also using the discharge capability to make even better use of our existing infrastructure. So I moved to Newhouse, what, eight months ago, something like that, and I'm in Northern California in the Bay Area, and so I'm freshly going through the rooftop solar and storage. I'm process, purchasing process. And one of the nice things now in that market, because it's more mature, is if you're in a place where you could participate in a VPP program, it's sort of like a streamlined part of the sales process.

I want to get solar in storage, and I can elect to participate, or it depends on how the offering is made. But, like, as part of my initial purchase decision, I say, yes, I want to be part of this program. Do we have that yet anywhere in V2G land? Like, is Tesla selling cyber trucks in Texas and saying, if you sign up for this program, we'll aggregate you

and, you know, loop it into our retail? We're a Jen Taylor in Texas, so we'll put our into our retail book or something like that, or is it too early? No, that is my understanding that Tesla, you know, does have kind of an in-app process to participate in these programs. They're started in Texas. They're working with Pacific Gas and Electric in California to participate in their V-Dax pilot program. And so I believe it is kind of a streamlined in-app process where you sign up for, participation in these programs. And I have talked to folks in the OEMs, and they do envision, you know, a future where that all happens, you know, at point of sale, where you're at the

dealership, you're making your decision, and the dealer rep is knowledgeable about what programs are available, and you would automatically kind of be enrolled in those programs with your permission. Are we there yet today? Definitely not, but it does seem like that would be, you know, the preferred approach to having that kind of point of sale decision where the consumer can easily enroll in a utility program. So how do you see this going over the next few years? Is this like, I could see a couple of paths. I mean, one being this never really takes off, but I kind of think it's going to, but I could either see it being there's some inflection point all of a sudden over the course of a couple of years, like every new EV that's introduced on the market is

bidirectional capable at a minimum, and then the programs start to emerge and, you know, people sign up in mass and this actually becomes like a significant asset on the scale of what we're deploying for residential batteries, stationary batteries, very quickly. Or I can see this being one of these things where like it just, it's so idiosyncratic at the individual OEM level. And, you know, it takes a long time for people to figure out how to actually sell it to customers. And then meanwhile, the monetization isn't really there in most places. And so it ends up being predominantly a home backup thing, but it's not sold when people want home backup. And so it kind of like grows incrementally, but it doesn't become commonplace. You're obviously a bull on the space,

but like, how do you see it going? Yeah, no, no, I appreciate that question. And, you know, I often use rooftop solar as an analogy to vehicle the grid. Like, you know, when at some point, solar was expensive, but didn't make any sense. Why would you connect to the grid? And then And what launched the rooftop solar industry was regulation. Each state had to pass interconnection, had to provide net metering, compensation, in many states offered incentives. And so there was a view that rooftop solar was a public good,

that we should encourage consumers because of the benefits, the public good of rooftop solar. And so they put in place of regulations in the policies. Fast forward 20 years, we've got a multi-billion-dollar rooftop solar industry, the price of solar has come down dramatically. And similarly, I think we need policy leadership to say, yes, V-to-G is an important part of the energy ecosystem. There have been numerous studies that have shown that electric vehicles are the single largest source of grid flexibility that will be on the grid in the not-too-distant future, and that we need to put in place policies and regulations that will support consumers.

on their journey to adopt this technology. So, you know, I do think, I think you're right, we can go in different directions, like any new emerging technology. There isn't certainty. But when you look at the trends, most every major OEM manufacturer has announced plans to bring bi-directional vehicles to market if they already don't have them. And so I think this is going to be a very common feature of vehicles going forward. It's whether or not there's going to be ways to leverage these EVs with their bi-directional

capabilities to deliver value to the grid through programs and different ways that will really reward consumers for providing those services to the grid. So at VGIC, Vehicle Grid Integration Council, we represent the industry, OEMs, charger manufacturers, that all see this vision where EVs don't become a burden on the grid where they actually create real benefits. And the more people that recognize the opportunity, the more policy leadership we have, the more likely it is that this technology will become more common. Can I offer a counterpoint using your own metaphor, I guess, or comparison? Well, I think what unlocked residential solar. So I think what you said, the regulation policy was table stakes. Like it had to happen.

Net metering had to be in place at that time, et cetera. But actually, what caused the inflection for residential solar in the late 2000s, which is really when the market started to take off was financing. It was when Solar City and SunRun and Sungevity and all these companies introduced the like PPA and lease model. And so the value proposition went from put down a bunch of capital up front and you'll get a seven year payback to put down very little or zero capital up front and you'll save money on day one. And that was the dominant model of solar for quite a while. And I can imagine something similar happening in V2G. If, again, if the programs for V2G

monetization in the grid become there, then you can imagine a scenario where the OEM or somebody says, okay, if you're buying this electric vehicle, you know, buy the bidirectional charger, and in fact, we won't charge you a dime extra for it. It's not an

incremental cost. It's the same cost as what your charger would have been otherwise. And not only that, but you're going to get a whole home backup for free. But you have to let us use the battery sometimes when there's a grid event and, you know, under these conditions. But you're getting free home backup. That's a super compelling value proposition.

I'd like to see that emerge. I think something like that is what, like, truly unlocks the market. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And what made those, that solar lease kind of abankable was the fact that you had that policy foundation where there was guaranteed value over time that you could then finance against and create that kind of opportunity for consumers. And so really what we need for V2G is a bankable revenue stream that can create the environment where these types of financing and leasing innovation can take hold and really encourage mass adoption. I agree 100%.

All right, Steve, this was very fun. Thank you for joining. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. Steve Lettender is a senior advisor at the Vehicle Grid Integration Council and the founder and editor of V2G News.com. This shows a production of Latitude Media. You can head over to Latitude Media for Link. to today's topics. This episode is produced by Max Savage-Levenson, mixing and theme song by

Sean Markwant. Anne Bailey edits the video version of the show. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor. All of our episodes are now on YouTube. You can subscribe to Latitude Media for episodes of this podcast and Open Circuit. You can find the audio version of this show anywhere you get your podcasts. I'm Shale Khan, and this is Catalyst.