V2G Bidirectional Charging Should Be Standard in Every EV

Your Car Should Power Your Home

Taha Abbasi has been living with vehicle-to-home power through his Cybertruck’s PowerShare feature, and the experience has fundamentally changed how he thinks about EVs. Bidirectional charging — the ability for your vehicle to send power back to your home, the grid, or other devices — transforms an electric vehicle from a transportation appliance into a mobile power plant.

The Cybertruck’s AWD configuration, recently launched at $59,990, includes PowerShare with 120V and 240V bed outlets. This means the truck can power tools at a job site, keep the lights on during an outage, or even run an entire home for days on a single charge.

The Economics Are Compelling

A typical EV battery holds 60-100 kWh of energy. The average American home uses about 30 kWh per day. That means a fully charged EV could power a home for 2-3 days during a grid outage — more than enough to outlast most power failures. As Taha Abbasi notes, this is the equivalent of having a Powerwall built into your vehicle at no additional cost.

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability goes further, allowing the vehicle to sell power back to the utility during peak demand hours. In markets with time-of-use pricing, this can generate meaningful revenue — charging overnight when power is cheap and discharging during expensive afternoon peaks.

Why Most EVs Still Cannot Do This

Despite the obvious benefits, most EVs on the market still do not support bidirectional charging. The reasons are a mix of hardware limitations (the onboard charger must support power flow in both directions), software complexity, warranty concerns about additional battery cycling, and the lack of standardized protocols.

Taha Abbasi argues these are engineering problems with known solutions, not fundamental barriers. Ford’s F-150 Lightning has bidirectional charging. Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 has V2L capability. The Cybertruck has PowerShare. The technology works — it just needs to be standard.

The Grid Benefits

If every EV on the road could participate in grid services, the aggregate battery capacity would dwarf all dedicated grid storage installations combined. Tesla’s Virtual Power Plant program already demonstrates how distributed batteries can stabilize the grid. Adding millions of EV batteries to that network would be transformative.

As Taha Abbasi sees it, V2G bidirectional charging should be mandatory in every EV sold from 2027 onward. The hardware cost is minimal. The grid benefits are enormous. The consumer value proposition — emergency backup power in every vehicle — is a compelling selling point. There is no good reason not to make it standard.

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About the Author: Taha Abbasi is a technology executive, CTO, and applied frontier tech builder. Read more on Grokpedia | YouTube: The Brown Cowboy | tahaabbasi.com