Daily Authority: 💡 EVs power your home

🍂 Good morning, and welcome to another Tuesday edition of Daily Authority. This week I’ve finally given in and pulled my winter coat out of the closet. Summer’s definitely over here!

Powering your home with your EV? It could happen, soon

There’s been a lot of good news on the EV front lately, like Aptera bringing the first solar electric vehicle to market, and California finalizing a rule to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars starting in 2035 (and Oregon quickly following California’s lead). While more EVs on the roads is already excellent news, opting for electric vehicles over gas-guzzling cars could be the answer to rescuing the US power grid.

• Research shows that cars are parked 95% of the time, so assuming your EV is fully charged and sitting in your garage, you could use the battery to keep the lights on in the event of a power outage, or your smart home up and running.
• When demand for energy spikes — such as during a heatwave or big freeze — power companies could even pay you for your excess battery power.
• This is what’s known as bidirectional or vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging.

Early days yet

This all sounds pretty great, but it’s still early days.

• Though pilots for the system are already taking place worldwide — over 100 at last count — most are in Europe, though small test programs have taken place in California.
• With an estimated 200 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, and an estimated 14 million in California alone by 2035, according to the Natural Resource Defense Council, the power in those batteries could be exploited by local utilities to power every home in the state for three days.

However, bidirectional chargers still aren’t common, and they’re expensive, though that’s changing. Earlier this month, Nissan approved its first bidirectional charger for the Leaf, while Ford’s F-150 could power your home for up to three days.

How might it work?

Standardization will be key to rolling this out — if EVs and charging systems from various manufacturers are technologically integrated, life will be much easier.

• Your utility company could give you a heads-up — either via text, app, or a notification on your vehicle dashboard — that they need your EV battery power availability during a heatwave or deep freeze.
• You should get the option to decline — for example, if you need your car fully charged for a work trip or vacation.
• This could make power outages practically invisible, avoiding rolling blackouts, keeping your smart home devices running, and decreasing demand on the grid when it spikes, as during the recent heatwave in California.
• In the near future, it’s likely this is something we’ll all be doing without even thinking twice.

Roundup

📱 We asked, you told us: A ton of you want a smaller flagship Pixel phone (Android Authority).

👀 Speaking of Pixel phones, Google can afford to increase the price of the Pixel 7, but should it? AA‘s Robert Triggs weighs in (Android Authority).

⌚ Sticking to all things Google, here’s what the Pixel Watch costs for the Wi-Fi model — and a leak reveals what colors could be available (Android Authority).

💲 Here’s how much the Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro could cost: Set to launch at Google’s October 6 event (Android Authority).

🪐 In space news: Lots of strange things about Saturn can be explained by a destroyed moon (Ars Technica).

🤖 DeepMind says it had nothing to do with research paper saying AI could end humanity: A researcher with a position at the company co-authored the paper, published in peer-reviewed AI Magazine, but DeepMind is distancing itself from the work (Vice/Motherboard).

🍎 There’s a fix coming for the iPhone 14 shaking camera issue: Apple confirmed an update will be issued next week (Android Authority).

🔋 Meanwhile, iPhone 15 Ultra could finally catch up to Android with rumors of 8K video, longer battery life, and more (Android Authority).

🎮 Rockstar Games confirms GTA 6 footage leak: The company suffered a “network intrusion” resulting in a leak of 90 videos of early development versions of the next chapter in the franchise, but work will continue as planned (TechCrunch).

🎲 Elden Ring’s coming to a tabletop near you: Steamforged Games is adapting the smash-hit game into a board game (Engadget).

Tuesday thing

This week kicks off Banned Books Week 2022, running from September 18-24.

• Launched in 1982 as a response to the increasing number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools, the event celebrates the freedom to read, highlights persecuted individuals, and draws attention to banned and challenged books.
• The Harry Potter series saw the most attempted bans between 2000 to 2009.
• Some of Judy BLUme’s books are also on the list of the most frequently challenged books of the 1990s, including the popular Are you There, God? It’s Me Margaret.
• Other books that have come under threat include Anne Frank’s The Diary of A Young Girl, which has been called “too pornographic” as well as To Kill a Mockingbird, which has been objected to and/or removed as recently as 2009, when it was removed from a high school in Canada after a parent objected.
• Since the inception of Banned Books Week, more than 11,300 books have been challenged.
• In 2021, there were 1,597 book removals or challenges.
• According to the American Library Association (ALA), most of the books were by or about LGBTQIA+ or Black people.
• Speaking of, the ALA has an interesting timeline of banned books.
• And you can follow along with all the week’s events and news on Twitter.

Whether you prefer reading physical paperback or hard-cover books or like to take in the latest bestsellers on your Kindle or other e-reader, here’s to the freedom of being able to read what we want, whenever we want.

Have a great day!

Paula Beaton, Copy Editor.