Electric vehicles that can serve as generators for your house

At GE’s joint showcase with Nissan at the SAE 2012 World Congress, the companies displayed a new technology that can reverse the flow from your electric car’s batteries to power your home in a blackout, much like a generator would do. The lithium-ion batteries in the zero tailpipe emission Leaf of Nissan’s Leaf electric car allow it to run appliances in one’s house for up to two days. A quick charging port connected to the house’s electricity distribution panel should be linked to the car for the system to work. Moreover, if a house generates its own electricity through rooftop solar panels, the power can even be transferred from the house to the car. Currently, Nissan is trying to commercialize this technology in Japan, as the Leaf batteries have the same capacity as the the average energy used by  Japanese household in forty-eight hours: 24 kilowatt hours. According to the company, refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines can be simultaneously powered.