Nissan Leaf photographed at Electric Avenue and Brixton Road in Lambeth, London. (Photo by Charlie … [+] Crowhurst/Getty Images for Nissan)
Getty Images for Nissan
The proliferation of electric vehicles is not sustainable, argue critics, because electricity networks will not be able to cope when everybody and their dog plug in EVs en masse. However, the opposite might be the case: battery-powered vehicles could pump electrons into the power grid. When the EVs are not being used, that is, which, like most motor vehicles, is most of the time.
Electric vehicles could therefore soon provide a widely-distributed hive-style bidirectional battery resource that would store green energy when it might otherwise go to waste and feed it back into the electricity grid at times of peak demand.
The $27,400 Nissan Leaf is one of the few widely-available electric cars which…