The automaker wants to use the energy in hundreds of thousands of EV batteries to help stabilize the electrical grid.

At an event in San Francisco today, General Motors made a series of announcements around EV batteries, energy storage, and grid resiliency in the face of growing electricity demand from AI data centers. The automaker announced that it would be activating new vehicle-to-grid capabilities for its current EV and home energy customers. It’s releasing a new commercial energy storage system strategy, anchored by newly developed sodium-ion batteries for industrial-scale grid applications. And it’s launching a new feature for EV owners that it says will help simplify public charging.

Right now, millions of EVs are sitting idly in driveways across the country with a wealth of electrons stored in their batteries. GM is betting that even as EV sales cool down, public utilities will want to work with automakers to utilize those EV batteries as a potential solution to the energy demand crisis they face. It was also the latest effort by the largest automaker in North America to grab a piece of the multibillion-dollar energy generation and storage market, which it has been trying to do for nearly four years now.

“We see a future where electric vehicles, batteries that power them, and the country’s power grids work together,” GM’s chief product officer Sterling Anderson said in prepared remarks for today’s event.

EVs are unique in their ability to send energy back to the grid, just as they pull it while charging. Many EVs are built with this bidirectional charging capability, enabling the two-way flow of energy. In essence, it treats high-capacity lithium-ion batteries not only as tools to power EVs but also as backup storage cells to charge other electric devices, an entire home, or even to send power to the electrical grid for possible energy savings.

As AI data centers put more stress on the grid, GM thinks its hundreds of electric vehicles can help lighten the load. The automaker says that with bidirectional charging capabilities, EVs can send energy back into the grid during times of peak demand. As such, the automaker says it will release a firmware update to give its current vehicle-to-home system customers the ability to send energy back to the grid (vehicle-to-grid, or V2G). GM customers who already own the equipment will receive the update automatically.