Octopus and BYD announcement
Octopus and BYD announce collaboration. See full article here:https://octopus.energy/press/octopus-byd-turbocharge-ev-revolution-with-all-inclusive-car-and-charging-bundle/
Octopus Energy has announced a groundbreaking partnership with BYD, the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, to bring bi-directional charging—also known as Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X)—to the mainstream UK market. This collaboration marks a significant step forward in enabling EVs to not only draw power from the grid but also return it, offering exciting possibilities for home energy management and grid balancing.
In particular, this may be the first main-stream support for V2X technology (although the standard has been around for many years). V2X was widely supported in the Japanese charging system known as CHAdeMO, the early charging standard used on the first generation Nissan Leaf, but has been ignored by many car manufacturers in favour of the Combined Charging System (CCS).
As a result, the UK has been waiting for the EV manufacturers to adopt V2X with only cable adapters available for those seeking a solution. In contrast, the US vehicles like the Ford F150 lightning and Tesla Cybertruck have been doing this for years.
We suspect with this Octopus announcement it will propel many more EV manufacturers into this area of the market. The idea that your vehicle could power your home during an outage has growing attraction but the ability to export/import and take advantage of energy pricing fluctuations is appealing to many more users.
In fact, this feature is how Octopus offers the 'free' charging with its BYD pact included in the lease fee. The batteries in EV's are massive (40-100kWh) compared to normal home batteries (8.5k - 10kWh) so a few kilowatts of power from your EV may only diminish your range by 10 to 20 miles but could potentially power your home for a few hours, or even a day. On top of this, the trading value of those few kilowatts could be generous (could run into £’s).
Obviously, with any deal that mentions the word 'free,' there will be small print; it covers usage up to a certain point e.g. 12,000 miles per year, but you also have to have your vehicle plugged into your EV charger for a certain length of time, multiple times a month which may not suit some vehicle leasees.
However, it feels like progress and we are looking forward to offering our customers and the wider Tewdric community the benefit of V2X technology in the near future.