As the maker of the world’s best-selling battery electric vehicle or EVs, Nissan has envisioned a new way for owners to utilize their cars to store and share energy.

Under the plan, called Nissan Energy, owners of Nissan’s electric vehicles will be able to easily connect their cars with energy systems to charge their batteries, power homes and businesses, or feed energy back to power grids.

The program has already begun in the US, Japan, and Europe with the aim to create an “ecosystem” around Nissan’s range of electric vehicles. Nissan says this is yet another facet to its Nissan Intelligent Mobility strategy.

“Nissan Energy will enable our customers to use their electric cars for much more than just driving – now they can be used in nearly every aspect of the customer's lives,” said executive vice president Daniele Schillaci, Nissan’s global head of marketing, sales and electric vehicles. “Our Nissan Intelligent Mobility vision calls for changing how cars are integrated with society, and Nissan Energy turns that vision into reality.”

Nissan Energy will establish new standards for connecting vehicles to energy systems through three key initiatives.

The first provides a service that helps identify viable electric outlets whether at home or the office where an EV can be charged safely. Furthermore, a built-in feature in the Leaf EV can help identify one of 22,000 fast-charging CHAdeMO networks globally.

Secondly, Nissan Energy provides a viable way to share energy with the power grid. Nissan says its EVs on the road can potentially contribute 10 GWh of power and thus the Japanese carmaker is finding ways to allow them to connect to the power grid. In short, they will act as virtual powerplants allowing vehicles such as the Leaf to share spare battery capacity without compromising their mobility. Currently, Nissan is already pilot testing the program in Japan, the US, and Europe. Once the pilot program is complete, Nissan is ready to rapidly commercialize the system.

Finally, Nissan is finding ways to use an EV’s battery even after it has finished powering the car. Nissan has already started repurposing the batteries to power a Japanese town. They’re also looking at ways to refurbish these batteries or potentially enable them to power heavy equipment such as forklifts.

“Nissan now offers customers a true EV ecosystem with Nissan Energy,” said Schillaci. “This is what we feel is the ‘new standard for electrification' – it’s not just about owning a vehicle but taking advantage of all the associated benefits, for the customer and society overall.”