At this price, this EV is effectively a mobile battery with a free car thrown in

This week’s article in Renew Economy by Giles Parkinson on plummeting battery prices got me thinking. CSIRO’s latest Gencost report found that batteries had decreased by over 20% in the past year, although this may be an underestimate, as is usual in all things renewable.

Trina Solar’s new 2,600MWh battery in Kwinana WA appears to be coming in at $300/kWh, although the article notes that more typical prices for large four hour batteries are around $423/kWh, with the battery price making up $294 of this.

Scale obviously matters, but these prices seem at odds with current domestic scale home batteries which sit around $1000-1200/kWh, especially with the Chinese supply glut mentioned in Giles’ article.

Enter the GWM Ora extended range, currently being offered in Perth for $26,490 drive away with a 63kWh LFP battery – that’s $420/kWh for the battery with the rest of the car thrown in for free.

Could this car be used as an alternative to a home battery to support V2H/V2G, as well as for running around town? The official Australian GWM site says not, but a deeper dive is revealing.

Ambibox GMBH are a company based in Mainz, Germany, specialising in making bidirectional chargers which they have tested on a number of EVs. Their charger has a CCS2 connector and converts the car’s DC output to AC without any modification to the vehicle.

They have had “plug and play” success with a number of EVs including both Tesla Y and 3 (giving 10kW output) and BYD atto 3 (7kW). Interestingly, they contacted BYD who were unaware that their vehicle had this ability!

Ambibox have teamed up with another company based in Munich, Mobility House which specialises in platforms to allow EVs to integrate with the grid.

Their website has an extensive list of EV manufacturers and models that are capable of V2X. The list includes the GWM Ora Funky Cat as well as BYD Atto, Han and Tang, plus more. They are obviously European models but have not been advertised as havingV2X capability.

Australia is not as advanced with V2X using CCS2 plugs, although the standards are in place and the first bidirectional units are on the market, and Ambibox has signed a deal with Brisbane-baed RedEarth to have its V2G chargers made in Australia.

It may be that some of our cheapest EV offerings may have more flexibility than advertised. We are certainly holding off buying a home battery in the hope that our BYD Dolphin can do the job instead. Hopefully someone out there is starting to do the testing.