When the Ford Fathom debuts in 2027, much of the attention will focus on its size and its price. As it should: The all-electric mid-size truck is promised to start under $30,000, and the success or failure of that car at that price will tell us a lot about the future of Ford, as well as mainstream America’s true appetite for EVs.
While we wait for our first real look at the truck and the full list of its specifications, Ford just revealed a promising tidbit. The automaker has been working in the background to make it simpler and cheaper for Fathom drivers to use bidirectional charging: the ability for power to flow both ways so that EV drivers can use the energy stored in the vehicle battery to power secondary loads, to back up a home power supply during a blackout, or even to feed back onto the power grid.
Specifically, Ford announced on Tuesday that the Fathom will be the first EV from a U.S. automaker with a starting price below $30,000 that does not need a separate wall-mounted inverter — the piece needed to transform the DC power stored in the car’s battery to the AC power used in the house. Instead, engineers built one into the truck’s “e-box” module that houses much of its electronics. That on-board unit is good enough to supply more than 10 kW of AC power to a home, Ford says.
Bidirectional charging isn’t new to American EVs or to Ford. The F-150 Lightning EV got this feature when it debuted five years ago. The trouble is that this game-changing technology doesn’t come cheap: The Lightning — now discontinued, soon to be revived as an extended-range EV — was an expensive ride starting above $50,000. The electrical hardware needed to connect the truck to one’s home power supply added thousands of dollars on top of the truck’s price.
The same was true for other EV makers. Two years ago, when I interviewed EV pickup drivers after Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina, I found F-150 Lightning and Tesla Cybertruck owners alike who hadn’t forked over more money for the extra tech needed to hook directly into the home. They got themselves through the blackout the Macgyver way, plugging the refrigerator and other critical appliances right into the power outlets in the back of the truck.
Ford’s Fathom, though, comes closer to giving the best of bidirectional charging to the masses. In addition to installing an on-board inverter, Ford says it will make the Ford Home Power Station and Home Backup Panel — the hardware that drivers will need to connect to the house — cost at least 60% less than the brand’s first-generation tech. The Detroit giant also says it’s working with a consortium of utilities, including American Electric Power, BC Hydro, Consumers Energy, Exelon, and Pacific Gas and Electric Co., to iron out how Fathom owners across the country will connect to their homes and the grid.
As Ford notes in its release: “There are more than 3,000 utilities across the U.S. and Canada with largely unique interconnection processes. Interconnection processes were primarily written for rooftop solar and stationary battery storage, which are fixed assets. Bidirectional EVs bring new considerations since they are vehicles first, not stationary equipment.”
Indeed, cooperation between car companies and utilities is suddenly a pressing matter as more EVs hit the roads, and the grid. Rivian and other electric car makers are trying to make their vehicles play nice with the power grid as a way for their customers to save money and reduce grid strain by having EVs charge when demand is low and electricity is cheap. And at some point, electric cars will become a major cog in virtual power plants — the ability of the power grid to pull energy from sources like EVs, backup batteries, and homeowner solar in times of need.
That day is finally approaching. Although bidirectional charging is a striking bonus feature for EVs, something so much more interesting and sophisticated than what a fossil fuel car can accomplish, the tech has flown fairly under the radar in the U.S. One could blame not only the lagging pace of EV adoption here, but also the fact that Tesla, far and away the market leader, has been slow to get on board. Just this month, it finally said that Model Y and Model 3 vehicles, the two best-selling electric cars in America, would get bidirectional capability.
The Ford Fathom, then, may do more than revitalize the lagging fortunes of Ford, which lost billions upon billions in its first forays into electrification and started up a skunkworks team to design the new truck in a totally different way. Their creation might also show Americans the EV’s enormous role in the home, and the grid, of tomorrow.
A hot deal. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
