⚡️ Grid alerts, V2G-friendly waranty for Nissan Leaf owners

Happy Monday. This is the 4th Edition of Electric Avenue. For this late summer edition we`re keeping it refreshing and light - like a tall glass of Lemonade 🍋.

BTW, if someone forwarded this to you, subscribe now to get the next edition directly to your inbox.

Here`s what we have for you today:

1 Pic + 2 Thoughts

But first, let’s take a look at the EV & Charging stocks movement over the past week:

Some significant gains for growth and EV stocks over the past week. Rivian`s stock specifically seemed to profit from the news that they would co-invest into a plant with Mercedes-Benz Vans. From what we gather, this would be a greenfield facility in Central & Eastern Europe (Maybe Poland?) where Vans under both the Rivian and the Mercedes brand would be manufactured. Given that the two companies use different underlying platforms for these Vans the synergies might not be all that high. The market seemed to love it though.

1 Pic

California faced an extreme heat wave over the past week and the previous weekend. Things got to a point where thousands of people temporarily lost power due to failing utility equipment, for example in San Diego.

Luckily though, state-wide rolling blackouts were prevented even though demand on the grid reached a new record peak of more than 52,000 Megawatts. This caused California to take the extreme measure of sending an alert to more than 27M cell phones in the state, asking consumers and businesses to temporarily reduce their power usage.

2 Thoughts

I. Nissan-approved V2G charger:

• Nissan officially approved a DC charger by Fermata Energy for V2G use with the Nissan Leaf in North America.

• As mentioned last week, DC V2G chargers have worked with Nissan Leafs in Japan for close to a decade. But for the US, this represents the first time a commercial charger that supports bi-directional ChaDeMo charging has been approved by an EV carmaker. 

• The interesting part here is that Nissan`s press release says "Usage of the approved charger will also not impact the LEAF's battery warranty."

• In terms of the DC charger by Fermata Energy, we could not find public pricing for the unit but a spec sheet is available on their website.

II. Dynamic pricing for Public Charging

• The Danish provider of Charging Station Management Systems (CSMS) Monta, is introducing a feature that allows Chargepoint Operators (CPOs) to reflect the spot market price of electricity.

• This goes one step further than the time-of-day dependent pricing by EVGo in the US which we reported on last week. 

• Two things to consider here:

  • Are other participants in the ecosystem, e.g. Roaming platforms and Mobility Service Providers (MSPs) ready for dynamic pricing?

  • How will customers react to this? Prices that change around a short 30min DC fast charging stop might be familiar memory to consumers from their gas station days. But a price that fluctuates ever 15min to 60min during a 10hr AC charging session at a workplace may be a bit overwhelming. More intelligent solutions will be required to abstract this complexity away from drivers.

• On that note, some CPOs manage to bring enough complexity into the picture even with "static" price models. Check out this example from a EVconnect-operated DC fast charger in Charlotte, NC. The $5/charge flat rate fee only applies Fri/Sat/Sun by the way...

Meme of the Week

"They`re the problem"

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions.