Your car as a battery: V2L, V2H and V2G
An electric pickup carries about ten home batteries' worth of energy and spends most of its life parked. So yes, it can run your house. Some of them, with the right hardware, in some states, today. The rest is press releases.
By Aatish Patel, founder of XCharge North America
Three acronyms, three very different things
- V2L, vehicle to load. Outlets on the car, or an adapter in the charge port, that you plug things into. Extension cords to the fridge. Cheap, simple, and surprisingly useful. Usually 1.5 to 3.6 kW, up to 9.6 kW on some trucks.
- V2H, vehicle to home. The car feeds the house through its electrical panel, with hardware that disconnects the house from the grid first. From the house's point of view, the car is a very large battery.
- V2G, vehicle to grid. The car sends power back to the utility, usually during grid emergencies, usually for a payment. In the US this is almost entirely pilot programs so far.
How much is in there
A Powerwall holds 13.5 kWh. A mid-size electric SUV holds 80 to 100. The big trucks carry 120 to 200. Even if you keep half for driving, that's several home batteries parked in the garage, and you already paid for it.
How long could it run the house?
A normal house averages about 30 kWh a day, but nobody runs a normal day during an outage. Keep the fridge, the lights, the internet and the furnace fan going, skip the dryer, and 15 to 20 kWh a day is realistic. At that rate a truck with half its battery left keeps the lights on for days.
The hardware in the middle
A car can't just push power into the house's wiring. Something has to disconnect the house from the grid first, so you aren't feeding the line a utility crew is working on, and something has to turn the car's DC into the house's AC.
- AC bidirectional. The car's own electronics make household AC, and a special charger and transfer switch route it to the panel. Tesla's Powershare and Ford's original Lightning system work this way.
- DC bidirectional. The wall unit does the conversion, like a battery inverter, and talks to the car over the fast-charging plug. Wallbox's Quasar 2 and dcbel's Ara work this way.
- Either way you need an isolation device. A transfer switch, a backup gateway, or a home hub that opens the connection to the grid. It's the same safety job a home battery's gateway does.
All-in, installed, figure on $5,000 to $15,000 depending on the car, the house, and how much of the panel has to change. That's before the car, which you were buying anyway.
Which cars can do it today
As of September 2026, in the US:
- GM's Ultium cars: Silverado EV, Sierra EV, Equinox EV, Blazer EV, Lyriq, Escalade IQ, Hummer EV and others, with GM Energy's V2H bundle, about $9,000 before installation. Eligibility varies by trim and year, so use GM's checker.
- Tesla Cybertruck, with the Powershare Gateway and Universal Wall Connector, up to 11.5 kW. Not the Model 3 or Model Y, whatever you read elsewhere.
- Kia EV9, with Wallbox's Quasar 2 and Power Recovery Unit, in a handful of states. The car stops exporting at 20%.
- Volvo EX90 (2025), Polestar 3 and the older Nissan Leaf, through dcbel's Ara, mainly in California so far.
- Ford F-150 Lightning: the original V2H setup, Charge Station Pro plus Home Integration System, was discontinued in 2026. Existing owners are supported. New ones are pointed to a manual transfer switch on the truck's outlets.
- Announced, not shipping: Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 9, Lucid, Rivian's R2, Scout. Treat dates as hopes.
The full list, with battery sizes and export power, is on the gear page. The comparison tool puts any of them next to a home battery.
Pros and cons
For
- Enormous capacity. Days of essentials, not hours.
- The expensive part, the battery, is already paid for.
- Often more export power than an essentials battery.
- You can drive away from a regional outage, or drive to where the power is and come back full.
- V2G programs, where they exist, can pay for it.
Against
- The car has to be home. Outages don't check your calendar.
- Most setups are backup only. A home battery also saves money every day on time of use; most US V2H doesn't do daily cycling yet.
- The hardware works with one brand, sometimes one model.
- Some carmakers set a minimum charge or limit export, and warranty language on extra cycling varies. Read yours.
- Availability is patchy by state, and one early system has already been discontinued.
The catch nobody puts in the ad
A home battery is always home. A car is home when you are, which is exactly when you need the power least. The case for V2H is strongest when the car mostly sits at home, when outages are long and rare, and when you'd otherwise buy a big battery or a generator you'll use twice a year. It's weakest when the car commutes every day and you want daily savings from time of use. For that, a home battery still wins, and some people end up with both.
Please don't do this
Never backfeed a house through an outlet. A cord with two male plugs, from a car's outlet or a generator into a dryer socket, is known in the trade as a suicide cord, for good reason. It energizes the utility's lines, which can kill a line worker, and it energizes the exposed prongs of the plug in your hand. If you want to run the house from a car's outlets, have an electrician install a proper transfer switch or interlock. It's a few hundred dollars. It's the cheapest thing on this page.