And Groundhog Day Greets Daily #2

And here we go again with original concepts about charging electric cars. Some persist stubbornly, despite being based on fundamental misconceptions.

That's why today we’re going to talk about an idea that excites charging infrastructure manufacturers and is touted at every pub table, but will likely have to wait a long time (or forever) for a breakthrough here in this country: bidirectional charging.

On the face of it, it sounds appealing. Because it would immediately make charging stations much more expensive and twice as profitable. For us manufacturers. But I, personally, as an electric vehicle enthusiast, have a few strong arguments against it that I’d like to share with you.

The first misconception is that bidirectional charging can be reasonably easily realized only with DC stations. The alternating current from the grid has to be rectified on its way into the car battery. If we were to charge in reverse, the DC electricity from the car battery would have to be converted back to AC power. The car isn't designed for that, so the station would have to handle it (haha, good pun). But the station would also need safety devices in both directions. Costs upon costs that no one talks about.

The second misconception is that the car would always have to be connected if it were to be used as a buffer for grid stability. This means that, in practice, a station would have to be available at home and at work for every car. Germany is currently promoting this very effectively – but with simple AC stations, which cannot be used for bidirectional charging.

The third misconception concerns the car battery itself. No manufacturer wants to suddenly accept double or triple the number of charging cycles because the car constantly has to stabilize the public power grid. They might have to cover warranty cases due to insufficient remaining capacity, which wasn't even caused by driving the vehicle.

Sure, it’s always argued that governments could promote this. After all, in electrically developing countries like some regions in Japan with days-long power outages, it sounds enticing to have your own emergency power plant in the garage. However, you also wouldn’t be able to drive to the doctor after three days if the power is still out and you're starting to experience frostbite.

The fourth misconception, which surely makes sense to everyone, is: A car provides freedom. The freedom to leave whenever I want, for example. That freedom is taken away from me if the energy provider can tap into the battery at will.

What does that mean?

Well, not everything that is technically possible makes sense. But our industry knows even more groundhogs. Curious? More about that in the next column!