By Kyle Proffitt
January 8, 2025 | The 2024 Advanced Automotive Battery Conference was held December 9-12 in Las Vegas and included a range of speakers dedicated to topics influencing batteries in EVs. GM, Ford, and Redwood Materials shared perspectives on reducing EV costs, improving charging infrastructure, enabling vehicle-to-grid charging, and moving to local supply chains supported by recycled materials.
Anil Paryani, Executive Director of Engineering at Ford Motor Company, spoke about the “iPhone moment” for EVs—one that’s been predicted, which he expected, but that hasn’t quite materialized yet. He spent his time focused on the economics around charging and how this is limiting greater adoption. Paryani said one of the problems is rising electricity costs, but he sees a great opportunity for EVs in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.
Paryani showed some comparisons of EVs and ICE vehicles, looking at the gas vs. electricity costs to drive the same distance. While it remains true that costs are lower to fuel an EV than a similar ICE counterpart, electricity costs have been steadily increasing, shrinking that gap. Using average San Francisco electricity and gasoline pricing, he showed savings for a Ford Mach-E relative to a 30 mpg ICE counterpart equivalent to about $1 per gallon. He pointed out that peak electricity pricing in California would actually make charging the EV more expensive than equivalent gasoline.
Paryani told a story of visiting Hawaii, where he noticed giant wind turbines sitting still, despite it being a windy day. He learned the reason—too much energy was already being produced from solar power, so the turbines weren’t being used. Similarly, Paryani pointed to charts showing solar power curtailment in California. Curtailment is when an energy resource is not being used because the immediate demand is not high enough to warrant continued generation. It turns out a lot of energy in California goes uncaptured. In April of 2024, California solar curtailment was approximately 800 GWh, enough, Paryani says, to fully recharge all of the roughly 2 million in-state EVs six times. That’s a lot of unrealized opportunity, and it’s an issue largely of timing and energy management.
Smart Charging and V2G
Paryani believes V2G technology can help take advantage of this opportunity. He explained that electricity pricing, at least in California, creates some perverse incentives. “When the grid costs are high, that means when the natural gas plants are operating, the actual price of electricity is low,” he said. “When we have the maximum solar power, that’s very low cost, very clean, the price of electricity is very expensive. This disincentivizes EV users charging a lot on solar.” As a first step, Paryani champions managed charging, allowing plugged-in EVs to charge intelligently around cost and energy source. Then, by letting the EVs give back with V2G, the situation is improved further. The idea is that managed charging with V2G will re-incentivize solar energy use. In the ideal scenario, workplace charging allows EV users to soak up energy while more of it is being generated from solar capture and then return that energy to the grid when the sun is down, during peak pricing. The idea is also a benefit to broader society, Paryani says, “because it lowers the cost and investment needed for long-haul distribution”.
To this end, Ford, Honda, and BMW have teamed to create ChargeScape, a company dedicated to optimizing EV grid services. ChargeScape was born from a need to navigate the complex landscape of different energy providers. “There’s about 3,000 utilities…. it would be really difficult for an OEM to actually be able to communicate to all those different clouds,” Paryani said. ChargeScape is trying to “abstract the interface to talk to the OEMs and vice versa,” cutting through all of the different protocols to simplify communication.
In addition to helping reduce the cost of charging and regulating energy flow to maximize renewable use, the V2G idea can also benefit society in other ways. “With a large fleet of EVs, you can create something called a virtual power plant and have response times within a second, which is really hard for a large natural gas plant,” Paryani said. He gave an example where Ford is actively involved. “We’ve entered in an emergency load reduction program,” and he explained that during disaster events such as wildfires that might require turning off part of the grid, “we get a message, and Ford vehicles can actually help support the grid today.” He reported some customers receiving up to $800 over a 4-month period for participating in such programs.
Paryani did not gloss over concerns that V2G will mean extra battery cycles that don’t equate to miles driven. Based on an estimated 1000-cycle lifetime for an NMC-based battery, with a pack cost of $150/kWh, he calculates a cost to the consumer of 15 cents per kWh given back to the grid. Paryani suggested that for V2G to make economic sense to the consumer, they need to get at least twice this, or 30 cents per kWh. The situation is considerably better with an LFP battery pack, because one can reasonably expect 2500 cycles, making the V2G cost just 6 cents per kWh (and meaning selling energy back to the grid at 12 cents/kWh is reasonable).
Better for Everyone
Paryani gave another example calculation of a typical Ford customer, who with V2G could cut his net electricity and gas bills by $100 per month. “Imagine if Ford or Tesla or someone else pays you $100 to not stop at the gas station every month, that’s what a V2G-enabled vehicle can do,” he said. “We really don’t have an excuse for why charging an EV cannot be the equivalent of a dollar a gallon or less… other than not having the right policies and maybe the right software to find the vehicles,” Paryani said.
In the end, he explained his view that the iPhone moment could only happen because of the cell phone tower. People realized “it was much cheaper than actually building out fiber,” he said. Similarly, Paryani says that EVs with V2G is “actually a much cheaper investment for society” and it can help stimulate the true iPhone moment for EVs.
