Think of your car as a home power supply on wheels. Tesson/Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
As manufacturers introduce new models of electric vehicles, demand for them is growing steadily. New EV sales in the U.S. roughly doubled in 2021 and could double again in 2022, from 600,000 to 1.2 million. Auto industry leaders expect that EVs could account for at least half of all new U.S. car sales by the end of the decade.
EVs appeal to different customers in different ways. Many buyers want to help protect the environment; others want to save money on gasoline or try out the latest, coolest technology.
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In areas like California and Texas that have suffered large weather-related power failures in recent years, consumers are starting to consider EVs in a new way: as a potential electricity source when the lights go out. Ford has made backup power a selling point of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck, which is due to arrive in showrooms sometime in the spring of 2022. The company says the truck can fully power an average house for three days on a single charge.
So far, though, only a few vehicles can charge a house in this way, and it requires special equipment. Vehicle-to-home charging, or V2H, also poses challenges for utilities. Here are some of the key issues involved in bringing V2H to the mainstream.
Gasoline can flow only one way, from pump to car, but with some technical advances, EVs soon will be able to send power back to homes.
The ABCs of V2H
The biggest factors involved in using an EV to power a home are the size of the vehicle’s battery and whether it is set up for “bidirectional charging.” Vehicles with this capacity can use electricity to charge their batteries and can send electricity from a charged battery to a house.
There are two ways to judge how “big” a battery is. The first is the total amount of electric fuel stored in the battery. This is the most widely publicized number from EV manufacturers, because it determines how far the car can drive.
Batteries for electric sedans like the Tesla Model S or the Nissan Leaf might be able to store 80 to 100 kilowatt-hours of electric fuel. For reference, 1 kilowatt-hour is enough energy to power a typical refrigerator for five hours.
A typical U.S. home uses around 30 kilowatt-hours per day, depending on its size and which appliances people use. This means that a typical EV battery can store enough electric fuel to supply the total energy needs of a typical home for a couple of days.
The other way to assess the capacity of an EV battery is its maximum power output in backup power mode. This represents the largest amount of electric fuel that could be delivered to the grid or a house at any given moment. An EV operating in backup mode will typically have a lower maximum power output than when in driving mode. The backup power capacity is important, because it indicates how many appliances an EV battery could power at once.
This figure is not as widely publicized for all EVs, in part because vehicle-to-home charging hasn’t yet been widely deployed. Ford has advertised that its electric F-150 would have a maximum V2H power output of 2.4 kilowatts, potentially upgradable to 9.6 kilowatts — about the same as a single higher-end Tesla Powerwall home energy storage unit.
On the low end, 2.4 kilowatts is enough power to run eight to 10 refrigerators at the same time and could run much of a typical household continuously for a few days — or much more if the electricity is used sparingly. On the high end, a power level of 9.6 kilowatts could run more appliances or higher-powered ones, but that level of usage would drain the battery faster.
People shelter at a church warming center in Houston on Feb. 16, 2021, during a record cold wave that caused widespread power outages in Texas. AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Storing power when it’s cheaper
To draw home power from their cars, EV owners need a bidirectional charger and an electric vehicle that is compatible with V2H. Bidirectional chargers are already commercially available, though some can add several thousand dollars to the price of the car.
A limited number of EVs on the market now are compatible with V2H, including the Ford Lightning, Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi Outlander. General Motors and Pacific Gas & Electric plan to test V2H charging in California in mid-2022 using multiple GM electric vehicles.
Some homeowners might hope to use their vehicle for what utility planners call “peak shaving” — drawing household power from their EV during the day instead of relying on the grid, thus reducing their electricity purchases during peak demand hours. To do this, they might need to install special metering equipment that can control both the discharging of the vehicle battery and the flow of power from the grid to the home.
Peak shaving makes the most sense in areas where utilities have time-of-use electric pricing, which makes power from the grid much more expensive during the day than at night. A peak-shaving household would use cheap electricity at night to charge the EV battery and then store that electricity to use during the day, avoiding high electricity prices.
Utilities and the future of V2H
While V2H capabilities exist now, it will likely be a little while before they see widespread adoption. The market for V2H-compatible electric vehicles will need to grow, and the costs of V2H chargers and other equipment will need to come down. As with Tesla’s Powerwall, the biggest market for V2H will probably be homeowners who want backup power for when the grid fails but don’t want to invest in a special generator just for that purpose.
Enabling homeowners to use their vehicles as backup when the power goes down would reduce the social impacts of large-scale blackouts. It also would give utilities more time to restore service — especially when there is substantial damage to power poles and wires, as occurred during Hurricane Ida in Louisiana in August 2021.
Power companies will still have to spend money building and maintaining the grid to provide reliable service. In some areas, those grid maintenance costs are passed on to customers through peak demand charges, meaning that people without V2H — who will be more likely to have lower incomes — may well bear a greater share of those costs than those with V2H, who will avoid purchasing peak power from the grid. This is especially true if lots of EV owners use rooftop solar panels to charge their car batteries and use those vehicles for peak shaving.
Still, even with V2H, electric vehicles are a huge potential market for electric utilities. Bidirectional charging is also an integral part of a broader vision for a next-generation electric grid in which millions of EVs are constantly taking power from the grid and giving it back — a key element of an electrified future. First, though, energy planners will need to understand how their customers use V2H and how it may affect their strategies for keeping the grid reliable.
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Seth Blumsack receives funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Heising Simons Foundation.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
How COVID-19 affected car rentals over the past year
How COVID-19 affected car rentals over the past year
Before the global health crisis, the car rental industry was enjoying a steady, successful climb with more people renting vehicles than in previous years. The pandemic, however, decimated much of the travel industry, the rental car market included. Rental car operators were forced to sell off large chunks of their fleet, and Hertz, one of the largest companies for decades, had to declare bankruptcy.
However, once travel bans and lockdowns were lifted, rental car operators were faced with a new problem: People were starting to hit the road again but companies no longer had enough vehicles to meet the demand. The standard rules for traveling—like leaving early and making reservations even earlier—became truer than ever as people rushed to leave the confines of their homes to stand in hour-long lines just to get their rental cars.
To see how much COVID-19 has changed the car rental industry over the past year, RateGenius investigated the current state of the rental car industry and its dramatic resurgence.
Ridership numbers dropped by 61%
As lockdowns were put in place, the number of car rentals in the U.S. dropped significantly. In 2020, only 17.3 million cars were rented. That is a stark contrast to the 44.5 million rented vehicles the year before. These numbers were based on statistics from car rental companies such as Sixt, Hertz, and Budget Car Rental. In 2021, car rental rates nearly doubled at 29.2 million, though this was still far off from pre-COVID-19 numbers. The car rental industry is projected to not only recover but beat out 2019 rental numbers with estimates at 46.8 million in 2024 and 49.2 million by 2025.
Industry revenue plummeted
As a result of abrupt and unrelenting cutbacks in traveling, the car rental industry suffered a major drop in revenue. This resulted in tens of thousands of layoffs across the industry. In 2019, companies made $11.8 billion in revenue by the end of the year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. However, as the pandemic limited people’s ability to travel, revenue was not estimated by the Census Bureau through mid-2020. More people began to travel in 2021 and revenue began to pick back up, reaching $15.5 billion by the middle of the year.
Loss of almost 40,000 industry jobs in 2020
A loss of revenue in the car rental industry cost thousands of workers their jobs. Nearly 40,000 positions were eliminated in 2020, after a steady increase in industry jobs from 2018 to 2019. This aligns with the experience of many other job markets in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics referred to the number of jobs lost during 2020 as “unprecedented.”
In April 2020, employment dropped by 20.7 million, the largest downturn since BLS started the Current Employment Statistics survey in 1939. By May 2021, there were about 19,400 people employed in the car rental industry—a 12.1% boost from May 2020.
To recoup money, rental companies sold off fleets of cars
To recoup their losses, many rental car companies sold large parts of their fleets. Major rental car operators sold more than 770,000 vehicles. To put that into perspective, 1 in 3 cars that were previously rented out by these companies were purged from service. After filing for bankruptcy in May 2020, Hertz dropped 198,000 vehicles out of its fleet of 650,000 cars.
However, this tactic later put many car rental agencies in another predicament once the market started to open back up, and operators had difficulty obtaining enough vehicles to meet customer demand.
As lockdown lifted, driving felt ‘safer’ than flying
Even after lockdowns were lifted, many travelers felt much safer driving rather than flying. This was bolstered by the opinions of some medical experts. “If you have to—and can afford it—I think traveling by car is the safest option right now, in part because you’re not traveling with another person whose risk of infection may be unknown,” Chris Hendel, a medical researcher for the USC Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science and Innovation, told Condé Nast Traveler in August 2020.
Car travelers could more easily avoid large groups of people; however, medical experts warned travelers not to stop too often during their road trips. Car rental companies like Enterprise also pledged to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for cleaning, which included a deep clean of every vehicle between uses. In Enterprise’s case, the company began including Clorox Disinfecting Wipes in every vehicle.
Vehicles were in short supply
With a combined shortage of vehicles and semiconductor microchips, operators were having difficulty keeping up the demand for rentals in late 2021. The semiconductor microchip shortage was particularly rough on the auto production industry, creating a lack of inventory for car rental agencies to purchase from.
For instance, Hertz typically increased the size of its fleet and the number of employees during the second and third quarters. “The continuing semiconductor microchip manufacturing shortage has impacted our ability to obtain a sufficient supply of new vehicles,” the company stated in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Unfortunately, the shortage meant available rentals also cost customers more money.
Wait times substantially increased
When passengers felt safe hitting the road again, there were long wait times for a rental car. In one instance, a Massachusetts woman told the Washington Post she waited two and half hours before she received her rental car at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. She waited in line for an hour just for service, but that wasn’t the worst of it. There was another 90-minute wait before she was actually given the rental vehicle.
Kayak, an online travel booking website, recommended that travelers book their rental cars one to three months in advance, particularly if people are planning to travel during peak months.
Rental rates skyrocketed
Because rental companies had a difficult time keeping up with the demand, rates for rental cars shot up in price once people started traveling again. “Demand came back a lot quicker than I think anybody anticipated, especially on the leisure side,” Neil Abrams, a former Hertz executive, told the New York Times.
In April 2020, rental vehicles cost about $102. By May 2020, the amount had dropped 23% under pre-pandemic pricing. By July 2021, prices catapulted to more than $258. The last time pricing was that high was in August 2009, at $242.
People sought creative alternatives to standard vehicles
To get around high pricing, long wait times, and rental car shortages, people began to get creative. Some used transportation apps, like Uber and Lyft. Some opted to use public transportation systems such as buses, trains, or subways.
Meanwhile, others sought out car share apps like Turo, which allows users to borrow a vehicle from a private car owner rather than a commercial business. A few folks thinking outside the box even used moving trucks as a means to travel. By renting a U-Haul vehicle, travelers could avoid certain fees, particularly when it came to the age of the driver.
The rise of car rental apps
One silver lining from the ups and downs the car industry has experienced over the past few years is the development of new technology. Car rental apps are becoming more popular as travelers look for ways to cut costs and search for alternatives to mainstream options.
These apps also allow travelers to rent from places other than airports, which are prone to long wait times and busy crowds. Apps can not only streamline the process for travelers, but also provide more flexibility. They also provide an option for frequent drivers who don’t necessarily want to own a car.
This story originally appeared on RateGenius and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
