Ford Plug-In Project: Bringing PHEVs to Market Demonstration and Validation Project
- Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, MI (United States)
- U.S. DOE Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, Washington, DC (United States)
- National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Albany, OR (United States)
This project is in support of our national goal to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. By supporting efforts that contribute toward the successful mass production of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, our nation’s transportation-related fuel consumption can be offset with energy from the grid. Over four and a half years ago, when this project was originally initiated, plug-in electric vehicles were not readily available in the mass marketplace. Through the creation of a 21 unit plug-in hybrid vehicle fleet, this program was designed to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology and to help build cross-industry familiarity with the technology and interface of this technology with the grid. Ford Escape PHEV Demonstration Fleet 3 March 26, 2014 Since then, however, plug-in vehicles have become increasingly more commonplace in the market. Ford, itself, now offers an all-electric vehicle and two plug-in hybrid vehicles in North America and has announced a third plug-in vehicle offering for Europe. Lessons learned from this project have helped in these production vehicle launches and are mentioned throughout this report. While the technology of plugging in a vehicle to charge a high voltage battery with energy from the grid is now in production, the ability for vehicle-to-grid or bi-directional energy flow was farther away than originally expected. Several technical, regulatory and potential safety issues prevented progressing the vehicle-to-grid energy flow (V2G) demonstration and, after a review with the DOE, V2G was removed from this demonstration project. Also proving challenging were communications between a plug-in vehicle and the grid or smart meter. While this project successfully demonstrated the vehicle to smart meter interface, cross-industry and regulatory work is still needed to define the vehicle-to-grid communication interface.
- Research Organization:
- Ford Motor Company, Detroit, MI (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Vehicle Technologies Office (EE-3V)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC26-08NT04384
- OSTI ID:
- 1133132
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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