Home Invaders: Volkswagen Turns That Whole EV Thing On Its Head

While everybody is dreaming (or shuddering at the thought) of masses of electric vehicles hanging off the grid at night, while that last ICE is donated to the Smithsonian, Volkswagen is taking a completely different tack. Forget the grid. Get your very own power plant. And guess what: It’s ICE powered.

Instead of being sent out to pasture, the ICE will invade our homes: German energy supplier LichtBlick has installed its first home power plants for residential and commercial customers in Hamburg. The energy is created by an EcoBlue natural-gas-powered engine, produced by Volkswagen exclusively for LichtBlick. The engines are tried and true 2.0 liter gasoline engines, as used and proven in millions of Touran and Caddy models.

Despite the 2.0 liter engine, we are not talking emergency generator.

These are 40,000 kilowatt hour units, suitable for very large single-family homes, buildings with two or three apartments, small businesses and public and social facilities such as schools and churches.

A lot of German homes are on the (Russian supplied) natural gas grid, which produces heat. Heat is also an unloved byproduct of energy production. So the idea is to deliver both. Driven by a marketing system that is astoundingly simple, considering that we are in a German setting.

The plant remains the property of LichtBlick, which rents the customer’s boiler-room. The customer pays a contribution starting at 5,000 euros for the installation. LichtBlick will dispose of the old gas heating system (in an environmentally responsible fashion, no doubt). Then they will install the ICE powered generating plant in your basement. They will take care of servicing, maintenance and repairs.

The result? Energy consumption will be reduced by up to 40 percent compared with conventional heat and electric power – or so Volkswagen’s press release claims.

LichtBlick plans to invest Germany with 100,000 of these home power plants. It would be Germany’s largest virtual gas-fired power plant with the capacity of two nuclear power plants. It would heat your home and water as well. A test set-up with 25 decentralized plants has already been in operation at Volkswagen’s Salzgitter plant since the beginning of the year.

Vladimir Putin, are you reading this? If you turn off the gas, not only will the Germans freeze. It also will be lights out in Deutschland. CO2? What CO2? And let’s not even think of charging an EV from these home grown power plants. The bind goggles.

(In case you ask: LichtBlick is German for anything from “bright spot” to “gleam of hope.”)