If you have plans to buy an electric vehicle, it would be wise to go for cars with bidirectional charging. If you haven’t encountered them in the past, you are now wondering what they are and how useful they can be.
Well, don’t worry – keep reading our post to the end, and we will inform you what they are, the different types available, and why they are a great deal.
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What are Cars with Bidirectional Charging?
As you can derive from the name “bidirectional”, these vehicles allow a two-way current flow. That means you can charge them from the grid and use them to power your home or other gadgets when there’s a power outage.
The good news is that you can sell excess energy to the grid and make money.
How Do Cars With Bidirectional Charging Work?
It’s not complicated.
These cars take AC from the grid and then convert it to DC, which the car needs to run. Depending on the specific type of vehicle, the conversion process can occur inside an AC-DC converter inside the car or on the AC-DC converter in the car charger.
And if you want to power external gadgets or sell energy to the grid, you will need to invest in a bidirectional charger. The charger should have an inbuilt inverter that can convert DC to AC.
Top 3 Cars with Bidirectional Charging
Now that you know what cars with bidirectional charging are let’s explore some of them. They include;
Ford F-150 Lightning
One of the best electric vehicles with bidirectional charging is the Ford 2022 F-150 Lightning. The vehicle is beyond ordinary cars thanks to the technology employed in designing it.
Interestingly, it is not as costly as you’d expect for such a vehicle – the base trim goes for $42,000, the XLT trim goes for $55,000, and the Lariat costs $59,000. The most expensive is the Platinum trim which goes for as less as $70,000.
The manufacturer (Ford) wants you to be confident when buying EVs. Therefore, they put these vehicles into grueling tests before availing them in the market.
2022 F-150 Lightning Battery
The vehicle comes with two batteries which can offer a driving range of up to 230 miles when fully charged. If you upgrade to a larger battery, you will appreciate a high driving range of up to 300 miles.
Charging this battery isn’t complicated – you can do it from home or any public charging station. Just make sure you use a 110V or 220V outlet.
The 2022 Nissan Leaf
The following EV that supports bidirectional charging is the 2022 Nissan Leaf. The vehicle will help you power your home without any emissions of smoke or gas in the air. However, for this to happen, you will need a power supply station within your home.
The car has a standard 120-volt charging cable that you can use to charge at any 120-volt outlet for level one charge.
Good as it is, this vehicle can be a bit slow – it will accelerate from zero to sixty in 7.9 sec, and the maximum speed it can achieve is 144km/h.
The 2022 Nissan Leaf Battery
You should not expect to get a long range with this battery. It will only last 150 miles meaning you will require charging too often.
Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV
Of all the EVs we’ve discussed above, not many can match the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. That holds, considering that this vehicle is self-charging! That doesn’t mean you can’t charge it from any domestic outlet.
Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV Battery
The new model comes with a 20 kWh battery that can last up to 54 miles before recharging.
Why are So Few Car Using Bidirectional Charging?
The technology is quite advanced and requires sophisticated equipment, which can be very costly.
Does Tesla do Bidirectional Charging?
Whereas Teslas can do bidirectional charging, the feature is currently not enabled. Perhaps the future models will incorporate it so you can use two-way electricity.
Does Mach E Have Bidirectional Charging?
The straightforward answer is a NO. The current model is not capable of bidirectional charging. And whether this feature will be available in the future is yet to be known.
The Bottom Line
With the above information, we urge you to go for cars with bidirectional charging and avoid the inconvenience of power outages.
You might also make some dollars if you sell the excess power to the grid!
