FollowA twist on conventional charging for electric cars, Nissan has developed a system that allows a vehicle to supply electricity to power a house.
A prototype of the charging system running on a Nissan Leaf electric car was unveiled in Japan on Tuesday. The system can be used to supply electricity to a house during a power outage or shortage. A two-way charging device that would typically convert the household electricity supply to a voltage suitable for charging the car’s battery can be reversed to feed power back into the household circuit.
The lithium ion batteries in a Leaf can story up to 24kWh (kilowatt hours) of electricity, which Nissan estimates is sufficient to power an average Japanese home for about two days. That means if the system was used for a few hours during the day, the car would still retain enough power to make trips.
