For years, people have been worried — both rightly and otherwise — that electric vehicles could strain the grid to the breaking point. But as they spread, and as EV technology advances, some think these rolling battery packs could become a lifeline for the United States’ aging electrical system.
“In the future, the electric vehicle will be the center of the entire energy grid,” Peter Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Volteras, told TechCrunch.
The potential is there: Last year, the U.S. installed 37.1 gigawatt-hours of grid-scale energy storage. The country could increase that amount by nearly 10 times if every EV on the road today was hooked up to a charger that can feed electricity back into the grid.
There are a few hurdles, of course. Many new EVs today don’t support vehicle-to-grid connections, though that’s changing, and there’s a lack of affordable bidirectional chargers. But Volteras has been making headway on the software side.
Recently, the London-based startup closed a $11.1 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Edenred, Exor, Long Journey Ventures and Wex, Volteras exclusively told TechCrunch.
Volteras is building virtual connective tissue that will allow plugged-in EVs to offer their batteries to support the grid. When massed together, they can serve as virtual power plants, giving utilities quickly dispatchable power that’s distributed across the grid. Along with control over the car’s battery, Volteras also gets access to a host of other connected-car features, like remote unlocking and telematics.
The company integrates with automakers’ own APIs and offers those functions to other companies interested in using them. In the case of a virtual power plant, a utility can pay EV owners to sell some of the car’s stored electricity back to the grid. Car rental services might subscribe, too, so they can remotely unlock vehicles for stranded motorists. Volteras charges those companies a monthly fee per connected car and passes on some of that revenue to automakers.
Several companies are working on similar solutions to smooth the connection of EV batteries to the grid — Texture, EV.energy and Greenely, to name a few — but Wilson argues that Volteras has a head start because his company is currently working with more than 30 automakers which include Ford, BMW, Tesla, Stellantis and Volvo. “We’re going to cover like 90% of the automotive market worldwide by the end of the year,” he said.
Automakers have been salivating over the financial prospects of connected cars, though progress has been spotty. GM, for example, in 2021 set a bold target for its subscription services: $25 billion in revenue by the end of the decade. But in its most recent annual report, the automaker didn’t offer an update. (Usually when things are going well, companies tell the world about it.)
Wilson still sees potential in connected services, starting with the battery. In addition to virtual power plants, Volteras is courting fleet managers, EV routing apps, and insurers interested in offering usage-based plans.
“This kind of hidden data layer that you don’t see — that’ll be the crux of how companies offer services to you, give you discounts, and make it more affordable to own an electric vehicle,” Wilson said.
