GM’s Electric Vehicles Will Soon Be Able To Power Your Home During An Outage

GM (GM) has partnered with utility Pacific Gas & Electric Company on a pilot program in California to use its electric vehicles as a power source for homes during a power outage or grid failure.

“GM’s collaboration with PG&E further expands our electrification strategy, demonstrating our EVs as reliable mobile sources of power," GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. "Our teams are working to rapidly scale this pilot and bring bidirectional charging technology to our customers.”

GM aims to have more than 1 million EVs in North America by the end of 2025. The automaker produces the 2022 GMC Hummer EV pickup and 2022 Chevrolet Bolt. It also has the Chevy Silverado EV pickup truck, which is slated for release in spring 2023.

Through the pilot program, GM and PG&E said they will test the first vehicle-to-home-capable EV and charger by summer 2022 and then move forward to multiple test EVs and customers’ homes with larger test trials by the end of 2022.

The EV platform will use bidirectional hardware that has been coupled with software-defined communications protocols that will allow power to flow from a changed electric vehicle to the home automatically by coordinating the vehicle, home and PG&E’s power supply, the companies said.

“Not only is this a huge advancement for electric reliability and climate resiliency, it’s yet another advantage of clean-powered EVs, which are so important in our collective battle against climate change,” PG&E Corporation CEO Patti Poppe said.

GM is not the first EV maker to introduce a charging feature on its electric vehicles as Ford has a similar option on the F-150 Lightning pickup truck, which is set to release in spring.

Ford’s F-150 Hybrid pickup truck was used to power a house during the Texas storms in February 2021, providing heat, refrigeration and coffee during the electrical outage, the Detroit Free Press reported.

As of Tuesday at 10:58 a.m. EST, shares of GM were trading at $40.93, up $1.10, or 2.76%.