Car to power your home

Mitsubishi Motors has unveiled the Dendo Drive House (DDH), a power system that lets consumers generate, store and share energy between their cars and home.

Launched at the 2019 Geneva International Motor Show, the DDH includes solar panels, a home battery and a bidirectional charger. Electricity is generated from solar panels and stored in the home or car battery, which is automatically shared with the house using the bidirectional charger, the company explained.

The DDH would allow customers to reduce fuel costs by charging their electric vehicle (EV) or plug-in hybrid (PHEV) at home using solar, and reduce power costs at night by using the bidirectional charger to supply electricity from their EV/PHEV to the home. In the case of a power cut, it also provides an emergency power source using the EV/PHEV or home battery to run appliances in the home.

Mitsubishi said the groundwork for the DDH came from a neutral energy project in early 2018 with France-based natural gas distribution company ENGIE and Hitachi Europe. For the project, ENGIE offered its HQ building as a Building Energy Management System (BEMS) equipped with solar panels, Hitachi provided its vehicle-to-everything V2X bidirectional charger and Mitsubishi provided its Outlander PHEV SUV plug-in hybrid vehicle.

When the building has collected more solar-converted energy than it can store, excess energy is transferred through the V2X charger to recharge the Outlander PHEV battery. This acts as an energy storage unit for the building, as the energy can be discharged when needed.

Mitsubishi plans on offering the DDH a package at its dealerships, including professional installation and maintenance, which should be available in late 2019.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/OnnoIllustration