Electric Avenue: Electric Cars on a Two-Way Street?

SAN DIEGO, Calif.- Think of it as the end of cars' slacker days: No more sitting idle for hours in parking lots or garages racking up payments, but instead earning their keep by helping store power for the electricity grid.

"Cars sit most of the time," said Jeff Stein, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Michigan. "What if it could work for you while it sits there? If you could use a car for something more than just getting to work or going on a family vacation, it would be a whole different way to think about a vehicle, and a whole different way to think about the power grid, too."

Stein leads a National Science Foundation-funded team exploring plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) that not only use grid electricity to meet their power needs, but also the car's potential to store electricity from the wind or sun, or even feed electricity back into the grid, earning money for the owner.

 

Visit Website >

Image credit: Thinkstockphotos