While electricity has been a thing for as long as most people remember, it seems that it's only now that we've started treating it as a commodity rather than something that appears out of thin air.
This switch in mindset could be credited to electric vehicles, and how they've got batteries that need to be filled just like petrol tanks. But next year, these batteries could be used to power a whole lot more than just the car that it's attached to.
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It turns out that these hi-tech batteries that power our cars can be used to power external things such as a house or another vehicle, and this is something that Volkswagen is reportedly looking into.
According to a report by Germany's Handelsblatt, the automotive giant could be implementing bidirectional charging as early as next year, in the ID range that sits on the new MEB platform.
A recent study revealed that the average EV user will only deplete around 15 per cent of a car's battery throughout a daily commute, meaning that a lot of unused energy is left stored in the battery.
To capitalise on this, bidirectional charging will feed the car's energy back into the national grid, in the same way that excess solar power from residential houses goes back.
Not only will owners get cash back for this, but it will also reportedly help with managing power spikes across the grid. In doing this, power will be pulled from the car at peak times, and returned when things calm down.