Polestar has announced that it will create two large trial virtual power plants in California and Gothenburg, Sweden, to examine how Polestar 3’s vehicle-to-grid capability could be leveraged to help stabilize grids and earn money for EV owners while their vehicle is parked.
We’re at Polestar Day in Santa Monica today, where the company is showcasing its future plans to media, investors and owners. For more news from the day, check out our Polestar Day News Hub.
Vehicle to grid, or V2G, is a concept in EVs that allows a vehicle to not only consume energy from the electrical grid, but also to discharge its batteries back into the grid to provide energy when needed.
This is all well and good on a single vehicle basis, but when you combine several vehicles across a large fleet, it has the potential to help stabilize grids by acting as large scale, immediately-dispatchable distributed energy storage.
These collections of distributed batteries have been referred to as “virtual power plants,” and they allow home batteries to take the place of “peaker” electricity plants, which typically run on fossil gas and are highly expensive and polluting. Tesla has launched several of these in various territories, including one in Puerto Rico that could become the world’s largest, and one that just recently got rolled out in San Diego.
Enter, then, the Polestar 3. Polestar’s upcoming Polestar 3 SUV will have all the necessary hardware for V2G on release, along with a massive 111kWh battery, the same capacity as more than 8 Powerwalls. And Polestar is now examining how it can use those vehicles to serve as a virtual power plant.
Today at Polestar Day in Santa Monica, Polestar announced that it will run two pilot virtual power plant programs, one in Gothenburg, Sweden, where the company is headquartered, and one in California.
It is partnering with local grid operators in Gothenburg and with the California Energy Commission to study V2G use in the two areas, and try to create plans that can be used across regions. Both studies are being funded by Vinnova, a Swedish government agency that funds R&D projects.
These projects will link all participating Polestar 3 vehicles into a central system that calculates the total battery capacity available and will discharge it to the grid based on demand, but also taking into account battery longevity on the vehicles.
Not only does a system like this help the grid, but it can also help owners make money. When “demand response” events happen and virtual power plants are called on, it’s often when electricity is the most expensive, and therefore, the most profitable to sell back to the grid.
Vehicle-to-grid has the potential to not only benefit individual customers, but whole communities. The average car is parked 90% of the time. With the bi-directional charging capabilities of Polestar 3 and the Polestar VPP, we can explore business models and community solutions that can unlock the true potential of V2G and enable owners to support the energy transition when they don’t need their car for driving.
Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO
For example, in the most recent heat wave in California, wholesale electricity prices got up to around $2,000/MWh, because grid operators were desperate to buy electricity at any price in order to keep the lights on. If that number doesn’t mean anything to you, the current spot price of electricity while I’m writing this article is $56/MWh. So grid operators were paying almost 40 times as much for electricity during that event as they are on a normal November night.
At $2,000/MWh, you could theoretically make over $200 by discharging an entire Polestar 3 battery into the grid. Compare that to the normal cost of charging up, which is somewhere in the $20-$30 range overnight in California, and you can see how this could be a profitable venture.
Powerwall owners have already seen the effects of this, with owners making up to $500 over the course of the first year of Tesla’s virtual power plant in California.
V2G technologies turn EVs into virtual power plants, making homes and the grid more resilient while putting money into the pockets of drivers. The CEC is excited to have Polestar partner with innovators in California to advance their V2G plans
Commissioner Patty Monahan, California Energy Commission
But with vehicles, there are other considerations. Since vehicles are typically used to get places, rather than used specifically for home energy storage like home batteries are, this means that the needs of the grid and the desire for profit must be balanced with… using the vehicle for its intended purpose.
Further, V2G requires additional hardware off the vehicle, allowing homes to feed energy back into the grid, which is not generally the direction that electricity goes in. This is why it has mostly been trialed in fleets (as Nissan and Fermata have done with the Leaf), and in home battery/solar installations where homeowners are installing grid interconnects anyway.
Because of these two barriers, V2G has been more of a dream than a reality for many years, talked about as a theoretical future technology by the EV faithful but without many tangible applications of it in real life.
So Polestar’s trial will see how practical it is for vehicles to be used for this purpose. Since vehicles are parked most of the time, they can be connected and ready for use by the grid. But Polestar will have to see how owner behavior can contribute to this, and how much juice they’ll be able to pull from each vehicle before owners decide they need that range to pick up the kids from soccer practice.
For this last point, Polestar has the benefit of having control over its vehicle software, such that an app could be designed where users can set their own parameters for when and how much they want their vehicle to be discharged during demand response events. Then the system can automatically call on any plugged-in vehicles through the internet and draw whatever owners want to contribute to the cause.
All of this said – while the Polestar 3 does include hardware for V2G, that doesn’t mean the software is included right out of the gate. Polestar says that a software update to enable bidirectional charging will come later, after this study finds the best solutions for consumer adoption and a business model that works for the system. So you’ll have to stay tuned for the results of the trial before you start using your Polestar to save the grid.
The trial begins in the first half of 2024 in Gothenburg, and will run for two years, and Polestar aims for it to be one of the largest V2G pilots in Europe. As for California’s pilot, a “pre-study” will begin in December, and run until October of next year, to decide on a roadmap of how to implement V2G in California.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.
Kandi has become fairly well known in the US for its electric golf carts and work-focused UTVs, but the company has teamed up with Lowe’s and the NFL on something more playful: the Kandi 4P electric golf cart. Sold through Lowe’s with official NFL team liveries, this four-seat neighborhood cruiser is aimed less at the fairway and more at cul-de-sacs, grocery runs, and game-day tailgates. I spent time with a Miami Dolphins–themed 4P in South Florida to see what it can really do.
Kandi 4P NFL-edition golf cart video review
Want to see it in action? Or want to see my family decked out in head-to-toe Miami Dolphins gear?
Check out our family testing video below!
Specs, power, and hardware
Despite the “golf cart” label, the Kandi 4P is built more like a small road-going NEV. Power comes from a 5 kW motor and a big 48V 150 Ah lithium iron phosphate battery (around 7.2 kWh), giving it plenty of grunt for neighborhood speeds of around 20 mph and a lot more range than you’d expect from something this size. In practical terms, it just sips energy; I did multiple days of errands and joyrides before even thinking about plugging it in.
Advertisement – scroll for more content
Charging is refreshingly straightforward. The cart uses a J1772 inlet, so you can plug into a normal 120V wall outlet with the included cord or use a typical home EV charger if you already have one. It’s overkill for a golf cart, but in a good way.
Underneath, you’ll find single wishbone suspension in the front, rack-and-pinion steering, and four-wheel hydraulic disc brakes. There’s even a 2-inch receiver tow-hitch rated for 500 pounds of trailer weight and a mounting spot up front if you really want to bolt on a winch.
Features and practicality
Inside, the Kandi 4P feels more like a small EV than a basic cart. There’s a very large touchscreen display with multiple info pages for speed, battery, and system status (and also displays the backup camera). An NFC fob handles “key” duties, and you get proper controls for forward, neutral, and reverse, plus hazards, lighting, and a tilt-adjustable steering column with stalk-mounted turn signals and horn.
The seats are nicely upholstered and genuinely comfortable, with DOT seat belts front and rear, cup holders everywhere, grab bars for passengers, and a built-in Bluetooth speaker for rolling playlists or tailgate anthems. A flip-up windshield can be cracked for a bit of breeze or propped fully open on gas struts, and the hard roof extends enough to keep you fairly dry in the rain. I should know – I had it out driving in multiple rain storms!
Storage is better than you’d expect: a small glove box, a rear trunk, and even a front “frunk.” Between those and the flat floor, we were able to pull off a full grocery run – though we probably should have planned our bag strategy a bit better. We ended up buckling a week’s worth of grocery bags into the back seats, but a tub in the back would make a better storage area for those types of large store runs.
Is it worth it?
At $9,999 through Lowe’s with whichever NFL team’s colors you prefer, the Kandi 4P isn’t cheap in absolute terms, but it’s very much in the mix for modern, nicely equipped neighborhood carts. High-end golf carts can easily run $14,000–$15,000 these days, and they don’t always bring a 7+ kWh LiFePO4 pack, disc brakes all around, J1772 charging, and all the street-legal bits in one package. Add in official NFL team colors and logos and you’ve basically got a rolling fan-mobile that doubles as a genuine second car replacement for many households.
No, it’s not as safe as a full-size car – there are no airbags or crumple zones here. But it does have real seat belts and lights, and it encourages a more aware, less “invincible” mindset behind the wheel. For people living in communities with 25–30 mph streets, these kinds of carts make a lot of sense: lower cost to buy, dramatically less energy use, no tailpipe emissions, less wear on roads and tires, and far more smiles per mile.
Compared to an e-bike, the Kandi 4P wins on weather protection and passenger capacity. Compared to a second car, it wins on cost, efficiency, and fun. And if you’re the type of person who wants to show up to the grocery store or the stadium in a full team-liveried electric cart, this thing absolutely nails the assignment.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.
In a bid to get it above the $1.00/share NASDAQ-required minimum, fledgling EV brand Polestar ($PSNY) is rumored to be considering a 1:30 reverse stock split that could see the per-share price rocket up to nearly $16.
Geely-owned Volvo spinoff Polestar is working as hard as Tesla to prove that stock prices have little or nothing to do with traditional business fundamentals in 2025.
That’s because Polestar posted a 36.5% increase in retail sales and a heady 48.8% increase in revenue (to $2.17 billion) over the year before, Polestar’s share price has plummeted more than 35% in a matter of a few weeks – culminating in an unwelcome nastygram from NASDAQ threatening to delist the company’s shares from the NASDAQ if they didn’t climb back up above $1.
In a reverse stock split, each share of the company is converted into a fraction of a share – so, if a company announces a one for ten reverse stock split (1:10), every ten shares that you own will be converted into a single share. In a 1:30 reverse split like the one rumored here, every thirty shares in Polestar would become a single share.
The reverse split increases share price, but it’s not without risk:
A company may declare a reverse stock split in an effort to increase the trading price of its shares – for example, when it believes the trading price is too low to attract investors to purchase shares, or in an attempt to regain compliance with minimum bid price requirements of an exchange on which its shares trade … investors may lose money as a result of fluctuations in trading prices following reverse stock splits.
That’s especially relevant because, despite the increased sales and revenue, the company is also posting increased losses. Through September, the brand posted a $1.56 billion net loss compared to an $867 million loss in the first nine months of 2024. The company is also getting hit hard by Trump-imposed tariffs in the US and increased downward pressure on pricing coming from aggressive post-tax credit discounts from rival brands like BMW and Kia.
If the split does happen, here’s hoping Polestar can make the most of their borrowed time and they don’t end up like Lordstown Motors or Faraday Future – two brands that have pulled similar reverse stock splits with dubious results.
You can find out more about Polestar’s killer EV deals on the full range of Polestar models, from the 2 to the 4, below, then let us know what you think of the three-pointed star’s latest discount dash in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
SOURCE: CarScoops; images via Polestar.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.
With its sleek, uncluttered styling and more than 100 miles of battery-electric range before the extended range electric sedan’s gas engine kicks on, maybe the new Nissan N6 really should have been the next Maxima!
Struggling Japanese carmaker Nissan is dealing with an aging lineup and a brand identity driven more by subprime financing than any suggestion of reliability or sportiness here in the US – but overseas? The brand is rolling out hit after hit, and the latest Nissan N6 plug-in sedan promises exactly the sort of entry-level panache that could change its American fortunes.
“Under our Re:Nissan plan, we are redefining what Nissan delivers today and beyond,” explains Nissan President and CEO Ivan Espinosa. “It’s about strengthening our core, reigniting Nissan’s heartbeat, and creating products that inspire excitement and trust. It is about a sharper, more focused product strategy, a stronger brand, and a renewed commitment to our customers. Integral to this transformation is China — an essential market whose speed, technological leadership, and customer insights are setting the pace for the global auto industry.”
Developed by the Nissan Dongfeng JV in China, the new N6 is more compact that the well-received N7 BEV. In fact, the new Nissan N6, at 190.1″ long, compares nicely to the 192.8″ length of the most recent (and largest-ever) US Maxima, discontinued in 2023. Like the Maxima, the top-shelf version features modern, near-luxe features like soft, leather-like surfaces, LED mood lighting, multi-way adjustable seats, and mimosas or something.
Advertisement – scroll for more content
Mimosas or something
Mimosas; via Nissan.
The four or five passengers inside the N6 are propelled down the road exclusively by the car’s 208 hp electric motor, which is efficient enough to take you 112 miles on a full charge of its 21.1 kWh LFP battery. Once that charge is depleted, a 1.5L gas engine kicks on as a high-efficiency generator to keep the good times rolling.
Nissan says the N6′ exterior design, “features a V-Motion signature grille and expressive LED lighting at the front and rear.” And says that the car’s crisp lines give it, “a confident, dynamic presence.”
All of which sounds good on its own, but sounds absolutely miraculous when you consider the car’s Chinese price: ¥106,900 – or about $15,000 US for the base Nissan N6 180 Pro, as I type this.
Even with a nearly 100% markup to give it a $29,990 price tag in the US, I think the N6 would be a huge hit in the North American market. And – good news! – thanks to Canada’s apparent willingness to give Chinese carmakers a shot, we might find out if I’m right somewhat sooner than later.
Check out the Nissan N6 image gallery, below, then let us know what you think of the car’s US and Canadian appeal in the comments.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.More.