Nissan has teamed up with Hitachi to test using power stored in electric vehicle batteries to keep elevators running during blackouts in Japan, particularly from earthquakes.

Japan has the most earthquakes of any country on Earth, around 1,500 a year due to being located in a particularly active seismic volcanic region called the Pacific Ring of Fire. When these events take out the local power grid, EVs provide a mobile grid that can keep critical systems on.

Using power from an EV is called bi-directional charging (or vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and vehicle-to-everything). In this case, it's vehicle to elevator.

During a recent pilot project first reported(Opens in a new window) by Reuters, Nissan and Hitachi successfully tested keeping an elevator at full capacity (nine people) running at slow speed for 10 hours. The power came exclusively from the battery of a fully electric vehicle called a Nissan Sakura.

Tatsunori Takahashi, a director at Hitachi Building Systems, says he intends to start providing the system to apartment buildings in Japan starting in April 2023.

The Sakura is considered a "micro" EV, with only 112 miles of range, according to AutoWeek, but it's designed to work with a variety of EVs, including larger ones like the sub-$40,000 Nissan Leaf. Relatively few vehicles on the market have bi-directional charging, but they're some of the most popular, like the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Hyundai Ioniq 5.

Automakers and local governments in the US have similarly discussed using EVs to keep power available during emergencies like the Texas blackouts in February 2021. Major automakers like GM have already announced plans to develop systems whereby EV owners can power their homes and sell excess power back to the grid for cash.

By: DocMemory
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