Real-world impact
Photo by Evan Krape October 30, 2026
UD research, technical expertise critical to automaker’s leap in affordable EVs that provide consumer cost savings
Ford Motor Company has announced plans to implement bidirectional power in a new mid-size electric vehicle (EV) truck in 2027 This will be the first EV from a U.S. automaker with an MSRP below $30,000 that does not need a separate wall-mounted inverter to supply AC power to a home. This new feature could provide savings for consumers on home electricity bills and power a consumer’s home when the power goes out (with additional hardware and an active Ford plan or trial).
Researchers at the University of Delaware played a key role in getting bidirectional power technology to scale.
Bidirectional power enables energy to flow both ways, turning an electric vehicle (EV) into mobile energy storage for customers and an additional energy source for the grid.
The automotive communication standard that allows this bidirectional power to work efficiently using less-expensive alternating current (AC) power is called SAE J3068, which was developed at UD.
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology invented at the University of Delaware enables the batteries in electric vehicles to do more than charge – V2G enables otherwise idle batteries to share energy back to the electric grid when it's most needed.: youtube.com/watch?v=863MIlCEG1g
Rodney McGee, with UD’s Institute of Energy Conversion, chaired the SAE International (formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers) committee and led development of the automotive standard (SAE J3068) that defines a charging plug and socket, and the LIN-CP communications, that can be used with any AC connection system, providing the missing
link for widespread use of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology developed at UD. McGee currently chairs another SAE committee, SAE J3400, which defined a standardized EV charging connector with the same V2G communications.
This research was first developed at UD nearly three decades ago and continues to power the next generation of electric vehicles.
UD’s Willett Kempton, professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, and colleagues conceived and developed the hardware and software concepts for electric V2G bidirectional charging in 1997. They launched the world’s first revenue-generating V2G pilot on UD’s Newark campus in 2013, technology now used in Delaware, California, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Japan.
In 2019, Delaware became the first U.S. state to enact a law enabling everyday citizens with V2G-enabled electric vehicles to provide power to the electric grid. Sara Parkison, then a UD doctoral student, helped draft and shepherd the V2G bill through the Delaware General Assembly, with support from Kempton, Rep. Paul Baumbach and former state
Sens. Harris McDowell and Gary Simpson. UD researchers and students also led technical and policy developments critical to using the new EV standards in today’s electricity markets.
Earlier this year, UD researchers and colleagues at Delmarva Power/Exelon released a report validating that the UD-developed V2G technology is low-cost, high-value and scalable. The report showed electric vehicles equipped with V2G technology can be a moneymaker for private owners and businesses, earning roughly $3,300 for passenger vehicles and up to $9,000 for heavier vehicles, such as fleet vehicles or school buses.
UD researchers continue to advance V2G technology by designing and evaluating equipment for compliance with new standards, advising industry on scalable demonstration projects, testing EVs and charging stations, and advancing state laws to permit consumers to use the V2G technology to save on utility costs, Kempton said.
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