As the transportation industry changes, automakers seek to add more value to Electric Vehicle, expanding their use beyond mobility
Electric vehicles are still far from mass adoption, and many reasons explain that. They are still expensive compared to their fossil-fueled counterparts, not all models have significant autonomy, and not many places in the world have a decent infrastructure to enable their use, so, love it or hate it, cars will be burning gas for many years still.
However, even EV technology is slowly making progress, and a clear sign is that every manufacturer has or plans to have at least one electric model in the next few years.
In parallel, the world is seeing a push for smarter mobility solutions. Many different ideas and proposals are being pitched in that arena, but ultimately they all seek to reduce carbon emissions and even though EVs partially address that issue, more and more people are being convinced that they don't need to use a personal vehicle as often.
Wheter it is bikes, shared transportation or other creative ways to move around that people come up with, there is a possibility that cars will spend a lot more time parked than they do on the road, and that is an issue, especially for mobility startups as a parked vehicle is money going to waste.
EVs beyond mobility
Some automakers are not oblivious to that new reality and are thinking of ways to incorporate value into their electric vehicles, even when stationary.
Bidirectional charging
Polestar is an example of a company that sees value in EVs even when parked. They believe their vehicles can be innovative energy solutions in the future.
Their recent announcement that vehicle-to-load (aka bidirectional charging) is coming to their EVs is part of that strategy.
Bidirectional charging is still in a very early stage, but the potential is there. The idea behind the concept is that people could use their EVs to power their homes during blackouts and offset electricity costs by returning power to its source during high-demand times. This is especially valid for households that generate electricity (using solar panels, for example).
As a strong supporter of decentralized energy, I'm very interested to see how things will unfold in this arena.
Crypto mining
Canadian automaker Daymak Inc. is also looking for ways to add value to electric vehicles. Their upcoming Daymak Spiritus, said to be the world's fastest Light Electric Vehicle (LEV), will have the ability to mine cryptocurrency whenever the vehicle is parked on top of its wireless charging pad or parked and trickle-solar-charging, or plugged-in.
Nebula, the cryptocurrency suite that will be integrated with the Spiritus features mainly two components:
The Nebula Miner, which, according to Daymak, allows the vehicle to mine Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, and other tokens, and the Nebula Wallet, which will enable users to collect, store and transact crypto mined by the Nebula Miner leveraging on blockchain technology.
I don't know much about mining, but I know enough to understand that it's very hardware intensive, so I'm very curious to see whether this feature will actually work. Still, the idea behind it is very interesting.
It would enable people to, for example, park their car while they are at work and mine crypto to pay the parking fees or at least part of them. Moreover, when a wider crypto payments network is in place, Spiritus owners will potentially be able to use the crypto they mine to buy things straight from their Nebula Wallet.
Final thoughts
Technology will transform the way we think of mobility and completely repurpose vehicles in the future. The examples mentioned in this article are only the first steps in this transformation.
Autonomous driving will take things even further, and things like self-driving mobile offices and even tiny homes will become a reality; and of course, electric vehicles are at the center of this movement.
There are still many challenges, but the economic, political and social forces will push toward EV adoption.
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