Nissan Sees Leaf As Home Energy Source, Says Tesla Big Battery ‘Waste of Resources’

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Driven: Owning an electric car in Australia could become much more than just driving from A to B with a reduced carbon footprint, according to Nissan Australia which launched the new version of the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle in Melbourne on Wednesday. Nissan confirmed at the launch that the new Leaf, with a 40kWh battery, will be a V2H (vehicle-to-home) energy asset — meaning that, unlike other electric vehicles, it will have the capability to charge your home (subject to further testing with Australia’s network owners and operators). Called bidirectional charging, the 40kWh Leaf (and for that matter the 62kWh version which is not yet slated for an Australian release) essentially has the capability to become your personal, massive, mobile battery. This means it will be able to not only store energy by plugging into your home, workplace or other destinations such as shopping centers with free charging, or from DC fast-chargers — it will be able to serve that energy back to your home. And it could be available to use in Australia within six months. Nissan’s global head of electric vehicles, Nic Thomas, says that installations such as the grid connected Tesla big battery at Hornsdale in South Australia is a waste, despite the fact that its performance — both for the grid and financially — has been widely admired. “It’s a complete waste of resources because what we can do is have cars that are also batteries and those cars are parked most of the time,” Thomas said.