Tesla says it could have bidirectional charging in two years, but will it?
Tesla vehicles will be capable of bidirectional charging within the next two years, according to comments from Tesla VP Drew Baglino at today’s Investor Day event.
A question was asked during the Q&A portion about whether Tesla would move towards enabling bidirectional charging on its cars, noting the company’s historical reluctance to do so.
Drew Baglino, Senior VP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering, answered the question by noting that the lack of bidirectional charging was not really a conscious decision, but rather not a priority at the time. But, as Tesla has improved its power electronics units, it has found ways to reduce cost while also bringing bidirectional charging to its vehicles.
Baglino went on to say that this could happen within the next two years, as Tesla is currently within a retooling process for their power electronics manufacturing.
But immediately after this answer, CEO Elon Musk stepped in to pour a little cold water on the idea, stating that “I don’t think very many people are going to want to use bidirectional charging, unless you have a Powerwall, because if you unplug your car your house goes dark, and this is extremely inconvenient.”
The answer was interesting because it gives a little insight into what Tesla’s thinking has been about bidirectional charging all along.
Bidirectional charging is the capability of a car to not only take power to charge the battery, but to send that power back to power devices, a home, or even the grid. These are further categorized as Vehicle-to-load, vehicle-to-home, and vehicle-to-grid, or V2L, V2H and V2G respectively, and sometimes categorized overall as V2X.
Historically, Tesla has indeed opposed putting bidirectional charging systems on its vehicles. Most manufacturers have as well – only a few cars have bidirectional charging, and it’s often limited.
The Hyundai/Kia E-GMP platform cars are capable of V2L, Rivian is capable of V2L with potential V2H capabilities coming later, and Ford’s F-150 Lighting is capable of V2L, or V2H with its Ford Charge Station Pro. The Nissan Leaf is the only car we’re aware of with V2G capability, which has been built into the cars since 2013 but only recently got a charger that enables it, though Lucid has said they’re working on V2X for their vehicles as well.
So where does that leave us with Tesla? It sounds like they will have the technical capability of providing bidirectional charging, but as the answer was short, we didn’t get a lot of specifics on the various forms.
One reason Tesla hasn’t considered bidirectional charging a priority is because there are some reasons that an owner wouldn’t want to use it. For example, if you parked your car with 200 miles of charge and plugged it into the house, then the house or grid decided to discharge your car to take advantage of peak electricity rates (perhaps through Tesla’s Virtual Power Plant program), perhaps you’d be surprised to return to it to 100 miles of range – maybe you made some money, but now you can’t get where you were planning to go.
For this reason, you’d need to have robust controls and internet communications with the car, so that owners can manage demand, but that shouldn’t be hard since every Tesla has internet communications built-in.
The house going dark isn’t really a big concern, though, unless we’re talking about off-grid solar-only houses that use the car as their sole overnight energy storage or something. Otherwise, a home would simply switch to grid power when the car is unplugged. So Musk’s answer was, at best, quite glib.
Baglino also mentioned that there is more value in simply “charging the car at the right time,” rather than sending energy the other way. And this is true – while the dream of using millions of EVs as backup power for the grid is interesting, EVs can already help the grid just by charging at the right time, when excess energy is available, and by not charging at peaks.
Most EVs already do this, because many locations offer “time-of-use” rates allowing EVs to get cheaper electricity at night, which already works well at encouraging owners to charge at night instead of during peak electricity demand And in fact, Tesla even announced that very thing in today’s Investor Day event – they’re offering overnight charging for $30/month in Texas later this year, where their isoated grid often deals with a glut of wind at night with nobody to sell it to, such that wholesale prices occasionally go negative.
But these answers do indicate possible internal tensions over whether to add bidirectional charging capability to cars. This is something that many EV owners like in theory, but could perhaps open a whole can of worms in practice, and may not actually help Tesla to sell all that many cars anyway since it’s a rather small crowd of people clamoring for this feature.
Baglino’s answer showed that the technical capability is there, but Musk’s answer showed that perhaps Tesla still thinks that customers might be too confused or resistant to the idea of losing a certain amount of control over their vehicle and home’s energy usage.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:
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