Electric Volkswagens will have bidirectional charging from 2022

The Volkswagen electric cars which are developed on the German car brand's modular MEB platform will be able to receive bidirectional charging from 2022, as can be read in a report published by a German specialist media; Handelsblatt. Many car manufacturers are working on directional charging, as this type of charging allows cars to discharge energy from their battery packs.

This downloading is often framed in a context of vehicle-to-grid systems, V2G, which integrate electric cars with the electrical grid or as a backup power source for homes at specific times. Although this has been progressing very slowly so far, the pace could accelerate. Thomas Ulbrich, member of the Volkswagen Group board of management for electric mobility, has assured that "Volkswagen sees the opportunity to bidirectional charging as a business opportunity, one that effectively aggregates the energy available at any given time from vehicles and operates as a utility in its own right.”

This is how bidirectional charging could work in electric Volkswagens

The German brand has been testing hardware that could be offered in the near future as part of a line of energy systems for homes. At the end of 2020, it also showed a unit of wallbox which could charge electric cars with a power of up to 22 kW, but also draw energy from the electric cars' battery packs. This allows the cars to serve as energy storage units for homes or as a battery buffer for the grid.

It is worth noting that in some markets, the new Volkswagen models offer the V2X technology and could compete with energy companies. However, Audi is also investigating bi-directional charging with the aim of seeing how the technology could help stabilise the grid. Fleets of electric cars have long been seen as a way to smooth out electricity demand by absorbing excess energy during periods of low demand and discharging it during periods of high demand.

Brands like Nissan, Hyundai and Kia are also putting all their efforts into developing this type of technology. Hyundai, for example, has made it a technology included in the E-GMP platform; the same one that supports the ionic 5 and Kia EV6.