From Martin H. van Raay, Hoorn, Netherlands
Using electric cars as a back-up for the grid is a great idea, but I doubt that EV owners could sell electricity at a premium, as Alec Luhn presumes. At the moment, in the Netherlands, you pay to put your surplus (solar) energy into the grid when the sun shines brightly. I don’t see electric companies letting go of that principle, as it is making them money. Better to use any surplus energy yourself (25 April, p 9).
Besides, at the moment, only a few cars are equipped to do vehicle-to-grid charging. Future cars could be V2G-capable, but then they will also be self-driving and that opens another vista: in the hours you don’t use your car yourself, you could “rent” it to, say, Uber, to use as a self-driving taxi, and split the proceeds with Uber. That might be more profitable than selling your energy to the electric companies.
