Unleash Your Energy – How Electric Vehicles Could Revolutionize Your Daily Life!

The writer is a contributing columnist, based in Chicago

EVs push a lot of emotional buttons, for those so inclined. There’s the thrill of instantaneous acceleration, the ego boost of feeling like the cool kid on the block, and the smug feeling of being on the right side of the climate change story.

But the new American generation of electric pickups takes this exhilaration to a new level. The Ford F-150 Lightning, the electric version of America’s best-selling vehicle, can power a home for three days during a hurricane or a remote job site complete with power tools.

Electric vehicle pickup truck owners boast that it’s like having an emission-free on-board generator: Multiple power outlets can blow up an air mattress, fry bacon, make coffee and run the air conditioning during camping trips. A Rivian owner used his truck to power the sound system for a 150-person off-the-grid wedding, while in Texas a urologist performed what he said was the world’s first Rivian-powered vasectomy.

Some owners say they love the personal powerplant as much as the powertrain, but energy experts say these aren’t just fun features. EVs could be rigged to feed energy back to America’s troubled power grid, not just take it. At a time when many fear electric car charging will strain the faltering grid, utilities and automakers say they could be part of the solution. E-truck owners could even make money by selling power to the grid during peak hours for more than they paid for overnight charging.

The Natural Resources Defense Council says this isn’t science fiction: It reckons California could feed each house in the state for three days, if every battery electric car it plans to put on the road by 2035 also feeds energy directly into the grid.

Matthias Preindl, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University, says he dreams of a day when electric vehicles could serve as backup energy storage facilities. For a limited time, together they could “deliver more electricity than all conventional power plants combined” and with fewer emissions than peak power plants currently used to meet extreme demand.

First, of course, the US needs to put more EVs on the road or, more accurately, in driveways, where most cars spend 95% of their time anyway. More and more models are being launched: GM’s Silverado electric pickup truck, with models promising 400 to 450 miles of range, will be available this year. Most experts estimate that just 1 percent of all U.S. vehicles on the road are electric, but sales are rising rapidly: The International Energy Agency says electric vehicles sales in the United States it increased by 55% last year to an 8% share.

Westley Ferguson, 33, is helping fuel that growth. Like many EV pickup buyers, he had never owned an EV or truck before—Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, often says most Lightning buyers are new to pickups. Ferguson told me over the phone that he wanted an electric vehicle “because investing in a gas vehicle felt like investing in the past and this felt like investing in the future.”

He and his wife took delivery of his $67,000 Ford F-150 Lightning just before his Florida home he lost power for three days in Hurricane Ian last year. Westley brought extension cords to the truck, draining about 10% of the battery each day running the refrigerator, lights, fan, television, electric ring, record player, and speakers. They then used the truck to inflate an airbed, cook dinner, and run the air conditioning in the cabin while camping overnight to grab a front row seat for a rocket launch, all for 3-5% of the truck battery.

Brian Calbeck, 35, a Google engineer who tells me that a “geek” about how his Rivian R1T “uses, stores, and reuses energy” rigged it to run the sound system at a remote family wedding l ‘Last year. He says he will be the “first to register” when grid-vehicle charging becomes a reality in his home state of California, but only if utilities can get the prices right.

With thousands of electric companies operating across the United States and many stakeholders whose interests need to align, I’m not sure EVs will help power the grid in my lifetime. For now, I’ll settle for blowing up the air mattress and saving the frozen meat in a heat wave. This is the EV lifestyle for me.