Carmakers become power storage providers

More and more carmakers are starting to offer power storage for domestic use in order to have a new source of revenue in times of uncertain e-car sales, Süddeutsche Zeitung writes. In addition to US manufacturer Tesla and Japanese competitor Nissan, German brands Daimler and BMW have entered the “rapidly changing” growth market, the article says. Carmakers are benefiting from the fact that older batteries can get a new lease on life once they become unusable in electric vehicles: once the batteries only have 75 percent of their initial capacity, they can no longer be used on the road but serve homeowners very well. In the basement, several storages can be connected because – unlike in a car – “the weight is irrelevant,” the article says. 

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW dossier The Energiewende and German carmakers for background.