Nissan buys into Ford, BMW, and Honda’s home EV charging business

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Nissan will be an equal investor in the EV home charging and vehicle-to-grid integration company ChargeScape.

By Umar Shakir, a news writer fond of the electric vehicle lifestyle and things that plug in via USB-C. He spent over 15 years in IT support before joining The Verge.

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Image: ChargeScape

Nissan is coming aboard vehicle-to-grid (V2G) EV integration company ChargeScape as an equal investor alongside founding automakers BMW, Ford, and Honda.

Once the investment transaction is complete, Nissan said it plans to roll out ChargeScape’s services to its electric vehicle customers in the US and Canada.

Formed last year (with operations starting in September), ChargeScape built a software platform that wirelessly “talks” to EVs and utility companies, managing home charging and sending energy back to the grid during periods of high energy demand.

EV owners who take advantage of ChargeScape services can theoretically save money by letting the system pause charging and sell stored EV battery energy back to their local utility company.

Nissan is no stranger to bi-directional charging technologies. The automaker included the capability in its pioneering Leaf EVs as early as 2012, designed to power homes during an outage. Efforts to make use of Nissan’s dying CHAdeMO charging port standard have been revitalized in recent years by V2G integrator Fermata Energy.

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