Power Companies Join Hands with the Automotive Industry: GM, BMW, Lyft and Others Collaborate to Accelerate EV Adoption

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Electric vehicles could boost U.S. electricity consumption by 38% by 2050, according to estimates from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Experts say this demand will bring new revenue for utilities, but it will also require distribution system upgrades and load management strategies to ensure vehicle charging helps maintain grid reliability rather than overloading local power systems.

To determine when to upgrade the grid, when to procure more renewable energy, and how to ensure customer satisfaction, utilities are increasingly partnering with various players in the automotive industry, including automakers, car dealers, and ride-hailing services.

"Because we don't manufacture cars or sell cars, we deeply understand that partnerships are crucial," said Nadia El Mallakh, vice president of clean transportation and strategic partnerships at Xcel Energy.

"These two groups never needed to interact before electric vehicles came along," said Joel Levin, executive director of Plug In America. Automakers and utilities "are now permanent partners, whether they like it or not," he added. Automaker decisions "have a huge impact on utilities, and vice versa."

"We're seeing a rise in joint ventures across the board," said Leilani Gonzalez, policy director at the Zero Emission Transportation Association. "Utilities are looking to decarbonize, and this is the way forward. They're ensuring we have a modernized grid to handle load fluctuations."

To better understand how utilities are working with the automotive industry, Utility Dive developed apartner trackerand spoke with five utilities about their specific efforts. These partnerships cover a range of topics, including managed charging, vehicle-to-grid integration, matching demand with renewable energy supply, and ensuring a smooth customer transition to electric transportation.

PG&E and BMW expand partnership to explore V2X technology

Electric vehicles currently account for about 7% of new car sales, but growing consumer interest and state and federal standards are expected to drive rapid adoption. President Joe Biden wants EVs to make up 50% of new car sales by 2030. This means utilities will face a sharp increase in transportation electricity demand, and peak loads could raise reliability concerns.

"From a utility perspective, you want charging to be smooth, without big peaks," Levin said. But automakers are building EVs with more power, larger batteries, and faster charging speeds. Home Level 2 chargers can draw up to 19 kilowatts, meaning that if not managed well, a few EVs in the same neighborhood could cause a "demand surge," he said.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) began working with BMW in 2015 on a "very basic" smart charging pilot, said Adam Langton, energy services manager at BMW North America Group.

"We started with demand response events, just curtailing vehicle charging, and then began doing more complex things, like studying the impact on local distribution through scenarios simulating how vehicles in a specific community respond to signals," Langton said.

In May, the two companies announced they would expand their partnership to study the potential for EVs to feed power back to the grid or power homes or buildings. Interest in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology is growing as utilities view EVs as mobile distributed energy resources.

"We need this partnership to be successful," said Amy Costadone, chief product manager at PG&E. The utility is also working with Ford and General Motors on bidirectional charging.

Costadone said research partnerships are "critical" for EVs as grid assets. "If we want to scale, and not just with one EV manufacturer, we need everyone to win," she said.

BMW and PG&E plan to conduct a vehicle-to-grid field trial at BMW's facility in Mountain View, California, and test other V2X applications at PG&E's Applied Technology Services lab in San Ramon.

"We typically each cover our own costs for different activities," Langton said.

"We need to understand how customers really want to use this technology," Costadone said. "I'm satisfied with the existing partnership, and the technology will be realized. It's completely feasible from an engineering standpoint."

Con Edison tests new technologies with GM Energy and others

In New York City, Con Edison has multiple partnerships that allow it to test and deploy new equipment connecting EVs to the grid. In October, the utility announced a partnership with GM Energy, a newly formed energy management division of General Motors, to test how EV chargers can track energy use and charging behavior without using a separate meter.

"This is more of a convenience arrangement," said Joe Morreale, manager of EV demonstration projects and managed charging at Con Edison. "Both sides have learning, testing, and experimentation needs that they can't accomplish independently."

Con Edison wants to gain a deeper understanding of GM's hardware to "understand its capabilities and how it can function as a distributed energy resource," he said. The partnership also gives GM access to test data and real-world grid conditions.

"This is truly an opportunity for both sides to learn from each other's expertise and develop products that benefit the end customer," Morreale said.

Con Edison is also partnering with the FLO charging network and New York City to install curbside chargers, study how they are used, and examine how public charging can drive EV adoption in the most populous city in the U.S. Morreale said that regardless of whether public or private entities are involved, the "overall goal" of EV-related partnerships "is largely the same." "Utilities and third parties both recognize that sharing information collaboratively is more beneficial than going it alone."

In the curbside charging project, FLO brings expertise in EV charging equipment, while New York City holds the street franchise rights.

"So we were able to install hardware on city streets, which is not typically a place where we can install," Morreale said.

"It's truly a perfect combination," he said. The private company provides the technology, the city provides the "laboratory," and the utility provides data, project management, and execution. "This is by no means something that could be done unilaterally, and we're very satisfied with the results so far."

Dominion maintains close partnership with electric school bus dealer

Dominion Energy has multiple partnerships in the EV space, but its "largest and most fully implemented" is its electric school bus program and partnership with dealer Sonny Merryman, said Kate Staples, director of electrification at Dominion.

Dominion launched the program in 2019 through a competitive request for proposals and selected Virginia-based fleet transportation dealer Sonny Merryman to deliver 50 electric school buses starting in 2020. Sonny Merryman also sells the necessary chargers to school districts and assists with charger installation support, said Whitney Kopanko, director of EV program management and marketing at Sonny Merryman.

The program has two phases. In the first phase, Dominion installs, owns, and maintains the charging infrastructure for school districts and owns the bus batteries, Staples said.

Because electric school buses are still more expensive than diesel buses, "we needed to provide a financial vehicle to help school districts overcome that hurdle," Staples said. "So the school district pays for the traditional portion of the bus, and we pay the difference, so we own the batteries."

"At the end of the agreement with the school district, we own the batteries and can remove them from the bus to use as stationary storage," she added.

The last of the 50 buses covered by Dominion's initial RFP was delivered in 2021, but Sonny Merryman "continues to work closely with Dominion on charger installations," Kopanko said.

"We design sites and install chargers together, and our sales and service personnel work with Dominion," Kopanko said. The two parties conduct site visits to discuss customer locations and needs, as well as how the dealer and utility can support those aspirations.

"Historically, many of our fleet customers are high-energy users. They are sophisticated electricity consumers," Staples said. As school districts transition to electric buses, "we want to ensure we strengthen our relationships with them and make sure we meet their needs from an electricity perspective," she said.

"That's where the partnership with the dealer is key. Because the dealer understands customer needs," Staples said. Sonny Merryman "has played an important role in connecting the utility with customers and ensuring customers get the education they need."

Xcel's unique regulatory approach in Colorado drives EV partnerships

In Colorado, Xcel Energy leverages a unique regulatory tool to quickly advance research pilots and partnerships, El Mallakh said. The Public Utilities Commission approved a portfolio that allows the utility to launch programs through a 60-day notice process.

"This is a $10 million program supporting partnerships, research, and innovation in the EV ecosystem," she said. The utility has run more than six partnerships through the portfolio and has proposed a similar framework in Minnesota.

"It's like a small filing, quite streamlined," she said. The 60-day notice outlines the partnership goals, Xcel's investment, and the partner's contributions.

In one of the projects, Xcel partnered with Colorado CarShare to study how to reduce the upfront and operating costs of car-sharing services that support underserved communities.

Through this nearly $2.5 million program, Xcel will provide rebates to lower the cost of EV purchases, conduct engineering for charging infrastructure readiness, and provide charging equipment for multiple partners, including the Boulder County Housing Authority, the Town of Breckenridge, Colorado Mountain College, and the University of Colorado.

Peninsula Clean Energy leverages ride-hailing services for grid data

Energy providers that are not distribution system owners are also building partnerships to address EV growth.

Peninsula Clean Energy is a community choice aggregator in San Mateo County, California, with a goal of providing 100% clean energy by 2025. The county has about 45,000 EVs, representing roughly 34% of new vehicle purchases, said Phillip Kobernick, senior transportation program manager at PCE.

PG&E handles power delivery, but under California's CCA model, the provider is responsible for ensuring supply.

"Our urgent issue is renewable matching," Kobernick said. "We want to provide 100% renewable energy on an hourly basis. There are a few hours that are more challenging... If we see large-scale DC fast charging peaks at 5 or 6 p.m. every day, that makes this challenge even harder."

In 2021, PCE partnered with Flexdrive, an independently managed subsidiary of Lyft, to exchange grid data for subsidized vehicle leases. PCE subsidized the cost of 100 EVs that drivers could lease from Flexdrive, ensuring the cost was the same as a hybrid vehicle, and provided free charging.

"This was designed to bring many benefits," Kobernick said. "We wanted to understand the use of EVs in high-mileage services. Do drivers like them? How do they charge? What are the barriers to further expansion?"

Lyft published a mid-term evaluation blog post in March, analyzing data from more than 213,000 trips and over 2.72 million miles. The subsidized EVs consumed a total of 3,000 kilowatt-hours per day on average, "estimated to save 146 gallons of gasoline per day."

PCE receives utilization data monthly and load curve analysis periodically. To date, it has identified time periods when providing clean energy to all customers could be challenging.

"We may need to explore alternatives to avoid large-scale fast charging during those periods," Kobernick said. Alternatives could include off-peak charging incentives or battery swapping, he said.

PCE is also conducting a managed charging pilot for residential customers who charge at home. The effort is being done in partnership with EV Energy, and results will ultimately be shared with the University of California, Davis.

"We want to do our own analysis, but we also want to share with academic partners interested in studying energy and economics so they can conduct independent analysis," Kobernick said.