GM Wants Your Electric Car to Power Your House—and Your Neighborhood
GM Wants Your Electric Car to Power Your House—and Your Neighborhood
通用汽车希望你的电动汽车能为你的房子乃至整个社区供电
Some 250,000 electric vehicles manufactured by General Motors are driving around the US today—right now!—with an oft-secret capability: Their big, powerful batteries can charge other things. Potentially appliances, homes, and now, thanks to a software update pushed by the automaker this week, an electrical grid. Twelve of GM’s EVs have this “bidirectional charging” capability, way more than US competitors’ battery-electrics.
目前，美国道路上行驶着约 25 万辆通用汽车（GM）生产的电动汽车，它们拥有一项鲜为人知的隐藏功能：其强大且容量巨大的电池可以为其他设备充电。这些车辆不仅可以为家用电器和住宅供电，得益于通用汽车本周推送的软件更新，它们现在甚至可以向电网输电。通用汽车旗下共有 12 款电动车型具备这种“双向充电”能力，远超美国其他竞争对手的纯电动车型。
The potential for this tech, known as vehicle-to-grid charging, is exciting. An EV should not only be able to power a home through a days-long outage. It should also support the wider grid, helping utilities balance out electricity use during periods of high demand, like the moment the heat becomes undesirable and everyone turns on their air-conditioning at once. Even better, car owners can charge up their batteries on wheels when demand and prices are low, and discharge it into the wider grid when it’s high—making them money in the process. The company can “turn every GM EV on the road into a distributed power resource,” said Sterling Anderson, the automakers’ chief product officer, at a company event in San Francisco on Tuesday.
这种被称为“车网互联”（V2G）的技术潜力巨大，令人振奋。电动汽车不仅能在长达数日的停电期间为家庭供电，还应能支持更广泛的电网，帮助公用事业公司在用电高峰期（例如酷暑难耐、所有人同时开启空调时）平衡电力负荷。更棒的是，车主可以在需求和电价较低时为“移动电池”充电，并在电价高昂时向电网放电，从而从中获利。通用汽车首席产品官斯特林·安德森（Sterling Anderson）周二在旧金山举行的公司活动上表示，公司可以将“道路上的每一辆通用电动汽车变成一种分布式能源”。
As US automakers work through policy about-faces that have upended EV sales projections in the US, forays into energy solutions like bidirectional charging give car companies opportunities to train their battery-making muscles. Anderson also says that while V2G charging looks like an automaking side quest, it also helps GM answer the bigger and maybe even existential question of, “How do we make a car more valuable?” Maybe it can be really fun to drive. Maybe, one day, it can drive itself and run your errands. Or maybe, one day, it can make energy for you when it’s plugged in in your driveway.
随着美国汽车制造商应对政策转向带来的电动汽车销售预期波动，进军双向充电等能源解决方案为车企提供了锻炼电池制造能力的机会。安德森还表示，虽然 V2G 充电看起来像是汽车制造的“支线任务”，但它也帮助通用汽车回答了一个更宏大、甚至关乎生存的问题：“我们如何让汽车变得更有价值？”也许它能带来极致的驾驶乐趣，也许有一天它能自动驾驶并帮你跑腿，又或者，有一天当你把它停在车道上充电时，它能为你创造能源。
But as any parent knows, the chasm between potential and reality can gape. To use their cars to power their homes, drivers need to buy a $20,000 system from the automaker’s four-year-old GM Energy subsidiary and have it installed by someone who knows what they’re doing. Also, they need to make sure their local utilities—and there are nearly 3,000 of them across the US—have worked with GM to not only OK the equipment but also to create programs that guarantee the owner money when their car helps out their whole region’s electrical grid. (GM says homeowners generally get that $20,000 up-front price back after five or so years of use.)
但正如为人父母者所知，理想与现实之间往往存在巨大的鸿沟。要利用汽车为家庭供电，车主需要从通用汽车成立四年的子公司 GM Energy 购买一套价值 2 万美元的系统，并由专业人员进行安装。此外，他们还必须确保当地的公用事业公司（全美有近 3000 家）已与通用汽车达成合作，不仅要认可该设备，还要制定相关计划，确保车主在车辆为区域电网提供支持时能获得经济回报。（通用汽车表示，房主通常在使用约五年后即可收回这 2 万美元的前期成本。）
Though a quarter-million Americans have GM vehicles with the bidirectional charging capacity, GM Energy’s customers number only in the “thousands,” according to the company. (A spokesperson declined to share more specific numbers.)
尽管有 25 万美国人拥有具备双向充电功能的通用汽车，但据该公司称，GM Energy 的客户数量仅为“数千”级别。（一位发言人拒绝透露更具体的数字。）
Still, Wade Sheffer, GM Energy’s vice president, insists: The reason more people aren’t using their cars to power their lives comes down to “awareness, awareness, and awareness.” To that end, at Tuesday’s event the subsidiary announced two partnerships with utilities: a “stress test” of bidirectional charging capabilities with 30 GM employees, enabled by Michigan’s DTE Energy, and a plan to get 52,000 GM EVs on PG&E’s major Northern California grid by 2030. The automaker says it has worked out dozens of partnerships with other utilities.
尽管如此，GM Energy 副总裁韦德·谢弗（Wade Sheffer）坚持认为：更多人没有利用汽车为生活供电的原因归根结底是“认知、认知，还是认知”。为此，该子公司在周二的活动上宣布了与公用事业公司的两项合作：在密歇根州 DTE Energy 的支持下，对 30 名通用汽车员工进行双向充电能力的“压力测试”；以及计划到 2030 年将 5.2 万辆通用电动汽车接入太平洋天然气与电力公司（PG&E）的北加州电网。通用汽车表示，已与其他公用事业公司达成了数十项合作。
Still, getting all of those GM cars hooked up and contributing to the grid will be a long and likely winding road. Not all states are enthusiastic about EVs or new energy tech right now. And even in early adopter states, where lawmakers are gung ho about innovative climate and energy policies, vehicle-to-grid tech is still in its early stages.
不过，要让所有这些通用汽车都接入并贡献于电网，仍将是一条漫长且曲折的道路。并非所有州目前都对电动汽车或新能源技术充满热情。即使在那些立法者热衷于创新气候和能源政策的“先行者”州，车网互联技术仍处于起步阶段。
It took researchers with UC Irvine several years of collaboration with Kia and Hyundai to get a vehicle-to-home charging project up and running in six Southern California homes. “Here we are two years later—not four weeks later—and utilities around the country are just beginning to address this,” says Scott Samuelsen, who directed the project and is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Irvine. “It’s very new.” The project hopes to discover how EV’s bidirectional charging abilities might fit into normal people’s lives—and, eventually, save them money.
加州大学欧文分校的研究人员与起亚（Kia）和现代（Hyundai）合作了数年，才在南加州的六户家庭中启动了一个“车到家”（V2H）充电项目。该项目负责人、加州大学欧文分校机械与航空航天工程教授斯科特·萨缪尔森（Scott Samuelsen）表示：“两年过去了，而不是四周，全国各地的公用事业公司才刚刚开始着手处理这个问题。这非常新颖。”该项目旨在探索电动汽车的双向充电能力如何融入普通人的生活，并最终为他们节省开支。
In March, Washington state’s Puget Sound Energy announced a pilot program that the utility is hoping will teach it to work with new sorts of companies—auto manufacturers, vehicle charging firms—while supporting the wider electrical grid. The project will run through early next year. Key among the utility’s tasks is guaranteeing different automakers’ and charging companies’ equipment can talk to each other, using the same sorts of standards. Clint Stewart, a senior product development manager at PSE, describes himself as a “techno-optimist”; he believes bidirectional charging is coming at scale. But not right away. “I’d like to believe that in five years, we’ll be at a point where it’s relatively figured out,” he says.
今年 3 月，华盛顿州的普吉特海湾能源公司（Puget Sound Energy）宣布了一项试点计划，希望借此学习如何与汽车制造商、充电公司等新型企业合作，同时支持更广泛的电网。该项目将持续到明年年初。该公用事业公司的核心任务之一是确保不同汽车制造商和充电公司的设备能够使用相同的标准进行互联互通。PSE 高级产品开发经理克林特·斯图尔特（Clint Stewart）称自己为“技术乐观主义者”；他相信双向充电技术终将实现规模化，但不会立即实现。“我愿意相信，五年后，我们将达到一个相对成熟的阶段，”他说。
On GM’s to-do list: ensuring customers have complete control of when their vehicles’ top the grid, so that they’re not stranded with no charge when they need to unplug and get somewhere. Eventually, the system might learn a car owners’ schedule and know not to suck out the EV’s charge right before, say, the kids’ soccer practice. There are a few things to work out.
通用汽车的待办事项清单上还包括：确保客户能够完全掌控车辆向电网供电的时间，以免在需要用车时因电量耗尽而陷入困境。最终，该系统可能会学习车主的日程安排，并知道在孩子参加足球训练前不要耗尽电动汽车的电量。目前仍有一些问题需要解决。
GM Energy’s Sheffer is eager to meet the moment. “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how drivers interact with their vehicles and turn them into something more than just transportation,” he says.
GM Energy 的谢弗渴望抓住这一时刻。“我们拥有千载难逢的机会来重塑驾驶员与车辆的互动方式，并将它们变成不仅仅是交通工具的存在，”他说。