The initiative will also investigate whether EV owners can tap their vehicle batteries into fresh revenue streams and also evaluate whether electric cars can be used to balance the smart grid energy supply.
Honda and GM will explore as portion of the initiative whether electric cars can be used to balance power supply in smart grids. In particular, the businesses plan to create information recovery techniques between electric cars and smart grids that are supposed to allow holders of electric cars to gain and exchange charges from saving energy in vehicle batteries.
The groups will operate within the international technology association Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI) that intends at making mobility facilities more effective.
The platform was introduced at the beginning of May and is the brainchild of over 30 respondents including Bosch, Hyperledger, IBM and IOTA. MOBI seeks to use “blockchain and associated techniques to create mobility safer, greener, faster and more accessible.”
While the research will begin this month, Nikkei claims other associates might participate later. BMW, Ford, Renault, and Faraday Future are all mentioned as other participants of the MOBI. This collaboration seems like a natural fit, as Honda and GM are already building EV vehicles together — the two automakers announced their battery collaboration last year.
Smart grids utilize renewable energy and any intermittent power problems could be assisted with EV batteries. Nikkei states that “the technique is already in practical use to move excess energy between electric vehicles and households. But technologies for connecting huge numbers of electric cars to metropolitan energy grids stay in the experimental phase.” It can be recalled that GM submitted a blockchain patent for a method that manages autonomous vehicle information.
The scheme is intended to provide “safe” and “stable” allocation of information and interoperable exchange between various autonomous vehicles and other organizations, such as counties, state authorities, and public bodies.
The American manufacturing company also became the partner of the blockchain firm Spring Labs’ endeavor to improve information safety. Mercedes-Benz has created a blockchain platform that enables document storage and agreements to be stored in complicated supply chains, among other major vehicle producers that embrace blockchain technology.
One such large-scale trial is taking place in Scotland’s Orkney Islands, where a virtual “energy system of the future” uses battery storage and electric vehicle batteries to offset any drop in renewable power production.