Electric school buses are driving major growth in the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) market, with capacity expected to double to 40 megawatts (MW) by 2025, according to a new report from Wood Mackenzie.

The report, titled “Power from the People: The State of the Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Market,” spotlights electric school buses as the key players behind this expansion. Their predictable schedules, large batteries, and plenty of downtime make them ideal for V2X applications.

Even with this promising outlook, the report points out a few roadblocks that still stand in the way of widespread V2X adoption, such as unclear utility interconnection processes and a lack of effective compensation mechanisms.

V2X technology, which lets vehicles feed power back into the grid, is currently concentrated among a small number of US companies. Some are focused exclusively on commercial or residential applications, while others cover multiple segments.

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At the same time, energy companies in Europe are busy forming partnerships to explore V2X business models, with a big emphasis on interoperability and scaling up the technology. Plus, regulatory support and utility incentives for vehicle-to-grid applications are steadily gaining momentum.

“V2X technology has huge potential to boost grid flexibility and create valuable new streams of revenue, but it’s still early days,” said Elham Akhavan, a senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie. According to Akhavan, as utilities and regulators sort out compensation and connection details, we’ll likely see adoption rates jump—especially in commercial and fleet markets.

More vehicles are now offering bidirectional charging, both in AC and DC formats, laying the groundwork for broader V2X adoption. However, Oliver McHugh, another senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, highlights that to achieve mass-market scale, we’ll need to standardize charging protocols and bring hardware costs down significantly.

McHugh also notes there’s still debate about whether AC or DC charging will eventually dominate. “AC charging is cheaper in terms of infrastructure, but DC is leading the way in pilot projects,” McHugh explained. AC charging faces some technical challenges since the inverter is built into the vehicle itself, whereas DC charging is somewhat similar to connecting solar PV systems, although even this has its limitations.

Looking forward, many passenger EVs coming out in 2025 will include vehicle-to-load (V2L) features, which are often seen as a stepping stone to wider adoption of AC V2X technology.

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Porsche lent us an electric Macan for a few days and we came away with plenty of thoughts about the already-popular electric SUV from one of the world’s most respected auto manufacturers.

Porsche’s new electric Macan mid-size SUV hit the road recently and is already quite popular, with the electric powertrain reportedly making up 44% of sales of Porsche’s most popular model in the US this year so far.

The company is actually preparing to discontinue the ICE Macan entirely – and already has in Europe. The gas guzzling version will remain on sale in the US through at least 2026, but the immediate popularity of the electric model will (hopefully?) make Porsche feel confident enough to push through the ICE discontinuation to the US.

So… how is that transition going? We got a chance to to test out the new electric Macan and tell you how it fares from the perspective of a longtime EV driver.

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For our test, we actually got the chance to live with two different Macan electric models for a few days each – the high end “Turbo” version in Copper Ruby Metallic and the lower-end “4” version in Ice Grey Metallic. Porsche also sells a base rear-wheel drive model and a mid-spec 4S model, with more power but not quite as much as the Turbo.

Between the two models we got to test a variety of the Macan electric’s options, which we’ll mention through the course of this review.

Performance

While an SUV isn’t a sportscar no matter what anyone says (the Macan EV is a 5,000-5,400lb vehicle, depending on spec, after all), electric SUVs can still perform quite well due to the extremely high torque that electric motors can push out and the low center of gravity provided by a heavy battery laid at the bottom of the car.

And the Macan EV is a Porsche, so you can expect it to perform well. We didn’t get to take it out on a track or anything (but lets be honest, even though it’s a Porsche, this car will see more grocery store parking lots and school drop-off lines than it does track days – likely by multiple orders of magnitude)

On the public roads we did test the car on, it offered more than enough power and great handling even in the lower 382hp 4 trim… and an absurd amount of power in the 576hp Turbo trim (both gain additional power in launch control mode – which will really throw your head back even with the lower-end model).

Frankly, I thought the Turbo was too much – despite not really being anywhere near the most powerful Porsche (that goes to the Taycan Turbo GT with 1,092hp), I still managed to give myself a headache with the violence at which it delivered power with a full stomp of the go pedal. The 4 or 4S would be more than enough for me, but if you’re looking to break some necks, the Turbo can get you there.

And, while the car hasn’t been out all that long yet, its reputation does precede itself. When I took the car to a weekend Porsche meetup (and was, perhaps surprisingly, accepted by the classic 911 admirers there), a man with his kid walked up and said: “hey, you wanted to see the fastest one here? Well, it’s that one.” So at least that battle is well and truly won.

The Macan EV has either 3 or 4 customizable drive modes (Normal, Sport, Offroad, and an optional Sport Plus mode), which is a feature seen on many cars, via a knob on the steering wheel.

A lot of cars merely change the throttle mapping between drive modes, but Porsche allows configuration of simulated motor noise (if you have the $500 “electric sport sound” option, which is a waste of money), chassis stiffness, ride height, and even changes the traction control to be a little more slippy in sport mode – though, I couldn’t find any way to configure steering weight. And you can set your preferences for each mode, which it will save. Once again, another aspect of the car that’s highly customizable.

Regardless of drive mode, the car’s handling was still excellent. I found it much more tossable than a car should be at that weight, and handling was predictable even on wet roads.

Differences between the modes are immediately noticeable – changing the “chassis stiffness” setting really does contribute to a much harsher or softer ride experience right away, and the sportier drive modes did feel like they allowed me a bit more slip.

We even took our brand-new Macan Turbo out to a local off-road trail to test the “off-road” mode (Porsche, you gave us a mode, of course we’re going to test it). The car performed admirably on a bumpy dirt road and some steep grades – but we didn’t dare take it into the wet, rock-strewn riverbed which was occupied primarily by lifted, beaten-up old Jeep Wranglers.

A quick note on regenerative braking

However, despite customizable drive modes, the Macan EV does not have customizable off-throttle regenerative braking. As is the case with many other VW group cars (but not all – the ID.4 now has stronger regen), Porsche has deigned to give us incredibly minimal regen strength (which the car’s included G-force meter helpfully told me tops out at 0.1G).

You still get plenty of regen when hitting the brake pedal, but these are blended brakes, where the car decides whether to apply regen or friction brakes. This means you can feel the transition from regen to friction brakes when you brake hard or each time you come to a full stop, which made each red light more abrupt than it needs to be.

While Porsche’s available regenerative braking force is high, I will continue to note that this is an inferior approach to offering strong off-throttle regen. EV drivers tend to love one-pedal driving, it’s one of the great joys of driving an EV. Also, having one pedal devoted to controlling the motor and another pedal devoted to controlling the brakes not only makes sense, it also makes the car’s performance more predictable.

The counterpoint would be that coasting is more familiar to gas car drivers (and also offers minor efficiency benefits – but if we wanted efficiency we wouldn’t make a 630hp SUV). But the goal of an EV should be to leverage the unique advantages of the powertrain to make it better than a gas car, not just familiar to one.

At the very least, there should be adjustable regen – after all, so much else on the car is customizable – but Porsche has offered only two choices: none, or almost none.

Efficiency & Charging

Over the course of my drives, I found average efficiency of 300-340Wh/mi, using a mixture of various drive modes. Most of this driving was in good weather, though I mixed in some off-road driving with the Turbo, and some rainy roads with the 4 (as a result, my least-efficient drive was on the 4, not the Turbo – due to rain).

My efficiency numbers would add up to a total real-world range of around 280-316 miles from the car’s 95kWh usable battery capacity, which is in line with the 288 mile and 308 mile ranges of the Turbo and the 4 respectively. Porsche told us that its range numbers are on the conservative side, but I found them to be pretty in line with my experience (and I tend to be a relatively efficient driver, so less efficient drivers may lose a few miles on me).

A (not so quick) note on charging

The reason I had two different vehicles is because, due to a series of unfortunate events, I was unable to charge the first one.

To make a long story somewhat shorter (just this section was 1,214 words before I trimmed it down…), a combination of bad charging networks, a communication error between Porsche and Electrify America servers, and bad charge port design conspired together to leave the first Macan I tested in my driveway with 17 miles left and no ability to charge before being sent back to a Porsche service center.

We ended up successfully charging the second loaner we got, which I’ll get to in a moment.

First, I’d like to mention that the Macan has a design feature that we at Electrek have long disliked – this plastic flap over the CCS portion of the charge port:

While this is normally just unnecessary and gets in the way of charging and turns a one-hand job into a two-hand one, in this case it also contributed to a physical failure of the car.

While the plastic bit is spring-loaded to flip up after the charger is removed, one time it didn’t. Then the electronic charge port door tried to close and got stuck on the plastic bit. Then the car detected an error and instead of opening up, it kept trying to shut over and over, and wouldn’t allow the other side’s charge port to be used either. (The Macan EV has two charge port doors, at the rear on each side of the vehicle, though only the driver’s side can do DC charging).

There was no solution other than to send the car back – or to break the plastic bit off, which I wasn’t about to do with a review vehicle (but if it were mine, I’d tear it off and solve the problem for good).

Once that was solved, when I got a second vehicle, the charging experience was actually great. The Macan EV can charge at a peak of 270kW (with best results starting at ~9% SOC), and when I charged it, I started at 18%. Charging was over 250kW at the beginning, and held above a rate of ~150kW until I finished charging at 73%. That charge took 17 minutes for 56kWh of energy and 162 miles of range. And the same car was at the front of the line when I left as when I got there, which means I charged faster than every other car at the station.

While any single one of my issues charging wasn’t necessarily terminal on its own (even the charge port issue was only caused because of the communication issue, which meant lots of plugging and unplugging), they all added up to a negative experience that could easily turn off a new owner from EVs for good. This is why it’s so important for EV companies to get charging right, and right now, Tesla is really the only one doing it right (well, Rivian too, just at much smaller scale).

In comparison, I have never had an issue at a Tesla Supercharger, other than having a wait a few minutes. Neither have most of our readers.

Porsche will likely gain access to the Supercharger network sometime this year, which should help to alleviate some network-related issues.

But for now, my main suggestion would be: don’t get the “power charge port cover,” a $580 option, until Porsche redesigns it or updates the car to have smarter failure modes.

Comfort & usability

The Porsche Macan offered quite a comfortable ride experience, particularly in “comfort” drive mode, which tunes the chassis for a smoother ride (and you can really tell the difference). Neither I nor any of my passengers had any comfort-related complaints.

Better yet, we also had the optional premium package ($3,900) and massage seat function ($670), which was very nice. I confess to sitting in the car for an extra 15 minutes on the last night of our test, doing nothing but getting a massage. It’s not the most comfortable I’ve ever been in a car seat (Hyundai Ioniq 9 and Faraday Future FF91 backseats get that award), but it’s definitely very close, and comparable to the most comfortable front seats I’ve been in (Audi e-tron).

The dash offers a good mix of physical and digital controls, with physical controls for climate and audio in particular.

But one thing I didn’t like was the gear shift lever, which is an up-down lever on the dash, like in the Taycan. I’m sure I’d get used to it over time, but it was a strange adjustment over my two weekends with the car. I also felt the cruise control/InnoDrive lever was placed too low on the steering column for those of us who use our knees to hold the wheel from time to time (don’t lie, you do it too).

The optional rear-wheel steering system ($2,040) has 5º of travel and offered a marked improvement in turning radius. I could really tell the difference between the car with it and the car without it – the turning radius was very tight for a somewhat large vehicle.

By virtue of being an SUV, there’s good storage in the rear, as one might expect. But the frunk is quite small – it came with a large bag to store charge cables (which are frankly bigger than they need to be) and had little more room than that.

Normally I would keep charge cables in the rear trunk under-floor storage, but that was also small, and mostly taken up by a subwoofer, leaving room for a small bag of car tools and that’s about it. So if you’re counting on a space to keep a bunch of things that you like to carry around all the time but don’t use often (e.g. a car cover or something), there are limited options in this vehicle.

Related to comfort: this car makes a lot of funny noises which were unpalatable to my ears (note: I do have exceptionally sensitive ears, so your mileage may vary here).

While the ride itself is quite quiet, this unveils a lot of sounds that probably shouldn’t be there. There’s obviously the federally-required pedestrian warning noise (which I think is misguided), but while regulations only require this up to 18mph, the Macan’s stays active until higher speeds than that (and seems to get louder as you speed up). That’s separate from the Electric Sport Sound, a $500 option for fake engine noise.

But beyond the intentional sounds, there are some other weird ones. The LED matrix headlights seem to make a buzzing sound any time they’re on, though this fades away when high beams are turned on. That’s odd. There also seems to be a fan that runs even when the car is off, though I don’t think it’s for battery cooling, maybe cooling the computer? Either way, it’s audible through the dash panel while just sitting there. There were several other funny unidentified noises, beyond the normal ones I expect on an EV (e.g. brake booster, battery contactors, battery cooling fans, etc.).

Technology

There is a lot of technology in this car, and cool user interface features. There are also a ton of add-on options, as is typical of Porsche.

Like many cars these days, Porsche allows connectivity with the My Porsche app to check charge status, activate climate controls, find charging stations and so on. This is a relatively new path for Porsche, and it sees the Macan EV as the flagbearer for its move towards more in-car connectivity.

The app worked well enough (on a chilly morning before heading to a car show I turned on the heater remotely, and the car got plenty toasty with just one minute or so of blasting the heat, which also turned on the heated mirrors), but the data on charger availability seems inconsistent between the phone app, the in-car navigation system, and the actual reality of the charging stations we stopped at. We also had trouble sending a destination from the phone app to the car’s nav system.

Porsche’s augmented reality HUD is amazing

The absolute coolest tech feature on the Macan EV is Porsche’s “augmented reality heads-up display,” a $2,520 option (exclusive to the EV Macan). Photos don’t do it justice, but I’ll include some here.

You’ve likely used a heads-up display before, which typically takes the form of a screen on the dashboard which is visible on the windshield, causing an illusion of floating letters in the air in front of you.

These often show drivers simple information such as speed, speed limit, and potentially directions from the in-car navigation system. Porsche can show those things, and also many others.

Porsche’s system takes this up to the next level, adding “augmented reality” features.

For example, if you are driving too close to a leading vehicle, it will add a yellow caution sign over the back of the car in 3D space to tell you back off (tailgaters, your day of reckoning… er, uh, visual clutter?… is upon you!).

But more importantly, it also tells you directions, and tells you directions exactly where they sit in 3D space (demo below, I skipped the turn because I just wanted to show the feature):

So if, for example, you’re coming up on a number of driveways and don’t know which one to turn into because your GPS just says “turn right in 300 feet” and you have no idea whether that driveway is 260 feet or 300 feet away cause who the heck can tell when you’re moving at a rapid pace in a big vehicle on a street… the augmented reality HUD will float three blue arrows directly over the driveway you’re supposed to turn into, and those blue arrows will appear as if they’re getting closer as you approach.

Even cooler, everything about the HUD is customizable. You can put the information you want where you want it, or take away the information you don’t want.

It’s hard to describe (hopefully the videos show it well enough), but it really does feel like a HUD done right. And it works with polarized sunglasses, which many HUDs don’t. Usually HUDs are invisible or close to it when wearing polarized sunglasses, which are a popular driving accessory to cut distracting reflections from the road and other cars, but this one is actually usable.

I had some minor quibbles, like I think the design and animation of the blue arrows could be a little different (especially on highways), and could see a dull glow from the corners of the screen on a very dark road at night, but overall this is the best HUD I’ve used.

…Its driver aids are less so

We got a chance to try Porsche’s InnoDrive driver assist system, which includes adaptive cruise control and lane keeping. We found the system somewhat cumbersome to operate and lacking in capability when compared to more advanced driver assist systems available from many other brands.

Other driver safety aids were appreciated. In particular, I liked the blind spot warning which utilized the in-cabin LED light strip, and the lane keep assist (which was active even when InnoDrive is off) intervened hard enough to actually hold me in the lane, even on a pretty curvy rural highway.

Lane keep assist did get confused from time to time when lanes ended or on highway exits, though, and required a little force on the steering wheel to overcome. This happened even when using the blinker for lane changes sometimes, which seems like an oversight. I hope that the high level of intervention and occasional confusion doesn’t result in people turning this off due to annoyance, since it seems like a useful safety feature, but an update to make it act less confused on merges and lane changes would reduce that annoyance.

Everything in the car is highly customizable

It’s not just the AR HUD which is highly customizable, but the whole car is. The car has a lot of settings and you can set all kinds of things just how you like them. It’s actually somewhat daunting trying to remember where all these settings are, and I was still finding new things until my last day with the car.

This is fantastic and I’m glad they offer this level of customizability, which is frankly more extensive than I’ve seen even in a lot of “software-defined vehicles” from startup manufacturers. (Although, we’d like to have more than one single “quick access button” on the steering wheel – it’s totally customizable, but there are so many options that it’s hard to pick just one – esp when having both forward/back would be nice, e.g. for skipping through podcasts).

But the user interface experience is still somewhat fractured – because Porsche has its own UI system (Porsche Communication Management, aka PCM), and also CarPlay/Android Auto, and also its own CarPlay app, which is not available in the Macan EV – yet? – all adding up to a total of 35GB of system software on the car, which seems like quite a lot.

This makes the UI experience feel somewhat unfocused to me, and in general, I’d rather have manufacturers just pick one and put all their effort into it. In the past, in-car UIs were terrible and everyone relied on CarPlay as a crutch, but now most manufacturers finally have acceptable UIs that I wouldn’t mind using, they just need a little more polish, a little more snappiness. (PCM also showed gas stations as points of interest by default, which is always a minus point for me, though this can be turned off).

But I don’t want to harp on this, because the level of customizability that Porsche offers is really exceptional, and it deserves merit for that.

Value

We’ve put this section last, because frankly, value is probably the last reason anyone is buying a Porsche anyway.

Starting at $75k base, the car is already close to not qualifying for the US federal EV tax credit (which caps out at $80k for SUVs). But that won’t matter to most of Porsche’s customers, who on average make about 3 times more than the personal income cap for the tax credit anyway.

The EV’s base price is about $12k more than the base ICE Macan, but across the board, the EV trims offer more power, better performance, and more standard features than comparable ICE trims. Some of these features include lane keep assist, the interior LED light strip, heated steering wheel, panoramic roof, and more.

And some exclusive options, like the augmented reality HUD, are only available on the EV Macan, not the ICE one.

Speaking of options, it’s very easy to go up from the base price, because like most Porsches, there is a vast array of options available, which can rapidly send the price up significantly.

We can’t possibly list all of these options here, so you’ll have to check with Porsche. A couple examples: a bespoke personalized vehicle key + key pouch, for just $770, or a carbon fiber case for your owner’s manual, for $790.

These options added some ~$25k to each of our tested vehicles. The Turbo was $105,300 base, but $131,970 as tested. The 4 was $78,800 base, but $102,320 as tested. Both had plenty of options, but were missing plenty of them as well. Clicking on everything I could in Porsche’s configurator, I found at least $60k worth of options to be added.

So value is a hard thing to examine here, and will depend highly on your option mix and each customer’s personal desires and financial situation. Porsche knows that it’s catering to a different kind of customer, and can offer bespoke customizations because its customers aren’t just looking for any Porsche, but for my Porsche.

What I can say is that there are definitely other electric vehicles on the market that can do a lot of the things the Macan EV can do at a lower price. But you knew that already, and if you were looking for that, you wouldn’t be at the Porsche dealership in the first place.

Conclusion

Porsche is convinced that Porsche buyers want an experience that’s just like every other Porsche. And Porsche fans are relatively famous for their resistance to change – there are still Porsche grognards who are dismayed by Porsche’s move to water-cooled engines, or to electronic power steering.

But Porsche’s first EV, the Taycan, has had an impressive record of bringing drivers over who are “new to Porsche.” So Porsche has an opportunity here to speak to new customers, who might be more open to new experiences.

Macan, too, has brought many buyers to the Porsche brand who might not have otherwise considered a Porsche in the past. It’s a more practical vehicle than a 911, and it’s a more reasonable size than the larger Cayenne.

So the Macan EV is a chance for Porsche to do something different, and I think they’ve missed the mark a little. I don’t think that making a better EV experience – in the form of stronger regen, or a more silent drive experience, or a less fractured UI, or not telling me by default where all the gas stations are (I know it’s small, but seriously how are automakers still doing this on EVs in 2025) – makes for a worse Porsche experience. You can have the excellent drive control that Porsche is famous for – and that the Macan has – while still fully embracing the electric experience.

And note that this publication approaches our reviews from the perspective of all-in EV fans – so we expect a lot out of our EVs. It’s not enough to just replace the powertrain, we’re looking for a complete ownership experience that stands up to the best out there – the Rivians, the Teslas, the companies that are all-in on EVs and really doing them right.

So like many efforts from traditional manufacturers, I see this as a transitional vehicle. It’s obviously not a slapdash first-generation effort like the compliance cars of the 2010s, it’s much better than that. But it feels like there’s still a step between the Macan EV and EVs like the Tesla Model 3, or the Polestar 3, or the post-refresh Rivian R1. It just seems like there’s still a little hesitance from Porsche stopping it from going all-in.

But given the immediately popularity of the Macan EV, maybe we’re looking at it too much from an EV purist perspective. Maybe it is indeed the right transitional path for Porsche’s customers particularly its Macan customers. I just tend to think that it’s better to make a car that doesn’t just happen to be electric, but that’s better because it’s electric – and really goes all-in on leveraging the strengths of the EV.

All that said, everything about the car is customizable, which is a really great thing to see from a traditional manufacturer. If there’s anything you don’t like right out of the gate, you can probably change it to something you do like.

And we may see more of the refinements that I’m hoping for on the upcoming Cayenne or Boxster EV – or they may even come to the Macan over time through software updates, which Porsche has committed to offering for its vehicles. Some companies have had trouble with software – especially VW – but Porsche has done some impressive software things itself, so we have some confidence they’ll be able to provide a consistently improving experience… assuming the Germans let Silicon Valley take the lead on such things.

Overall, the Macan is comfortable, extremely powerful, has great driving dynamics and an incredible amount of customizability. But I can’t help but think that Porsche still has one foot in the non-electric world, and could benefit from diving straight in on EVs.

The Porsche Macan EV is available now. If you’re interested in a 2025 Porsche Macan EV, you can use our link to get in contact with a local dealer and register your interest.

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BYD’s first ultra-luxury electric sedan hit the market on Thursday at an even lower price than expected. The Yangwang U7 packs nearly 1,300 horsepower from four electric motors, is loaded with smart tech and premium features, and starts at under $90,000.

Yangwang U7 arrives as BYD’s first ultra-luxury EV sedan

You probably know BYD for its low-cost electric cars like the $10,000 Seagull EV sold in China, but the automaker is quickly expanding into new markets.

BYD launched Yangwang in early 2023, an ultra-luxury brand aimed at Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and other premium automakers.

The brand’s first vehicle, the U8 off-road SUV, arrived in September 2023, starting at about $150,000 (1,098,000 yuan). Last year, it launched the Yangwang U9 electric supercar, which is faster than a Ferrari and starts at $233,400 (1,680,000 yuan).

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On Thursday, BYD launched the Yangwang U7, its first ultra-luxury EV sedan. The U7 has four electric motors producing up to 1,287 horsepower (960 kW), good for a 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 km/h) sprint in 2.9 seconds.

At 5,265 mm long, 1,998 mm wide, and 1,517 mm tall, the U7 is slightly bigger than Porsche’s Panamera. Like the U9, the luxury sedan features its DiSus-Z body control system, which can stabilize the vehicle if a wheel blows out.

It’s also equipped with BYD’s “God’s Eye” A advanced driving assistance system. With three Lidars, five radars, 13 high-def cameras, and 12 ultrasonic radars, the system offers Level 2 self-driving capabilities. It will offer ADAS features, including Navigate on Autopilot (NOA).

Powered by a 135.5 kWh BYD Blade battery, the luxury sedan has CLTC range of up to 720 km (447 miles). It can also fast charge (30% to 80%) in under 20 minutes with DC fast-charging speeds of up to 500 kW.

Inside, the Yangwang U7 is similar to the U8, with a “Star Ring Cockpit” layout, BYD’s DiLink smart cockpit system, and DeepSeek AI. It includes a 12.8″ curved center screen, a 23″ instrument display, and 6″ passenger entertainment screens.

The U7 is available in electric and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) variants. Although it was expected to start at around 1 million yuan, BYD’s ultra-luxury sedan hit the market at just 628,000 yuan ($87,700) for the five-seat version. The four-seater starts at 708,000 yuan ($94,300).