How much do you love your car? You might have spent 5-6 figures of money on it to buy it, but at the end of the day it sits, rotting and depreciating for 96% of the time.
The era of EVs is set to change this – either with Elon Musk’s Robotaxi vision or as an energy storage medium.
Let’s take a look at the problem of your combustion-engined car sucking you dry while doing nothing and then the future of electric mobility.
Your car is sucking you dry and doing nothing
According to a 2021 article by the UK’s RAC Foundation, “The average car or van in England is driven just 4% of the time, a figure that has barely changed in quarter of a century.
For the rest of the time the car or van is either parked at home (73%) or parked elsewhere (23%), for example, at work.”
That translates to 18 hours a day spent outside your home while costing you $$$:
- It is depreciating in value
- At the same time you may be paying a car loan or lease on it
- It needs maintenance
- Taxes
- Government safety certification like the UK’s MOT
- Insurance
When you do drive a combustion engined car it is pumping toxins into the air, leading to countless premature deaths all over the world and slowing everyone else down as cities go into gridlock every day.
That’s a lot of financial love you put into a lump of metal that’s doing nothing most of the time and choking you. But what if it could be more use?
Busy bee EVs – two use models
Whatever you think of Elon Musk’s often impulsive commentary, he has had a consistent vision over the future of car ownership. For at least a decade he has been talking of cars-as-a-service (CaaS) using the Tesla Robotaxi.
In April last year, Musk said, “The reality is, in the future, most people are not going to buy cars.”
A rival answer to the car rotting in the driveway is the V2X system, where EVs support the electricity grid while not being driven. In the next two sections we will dive a little deeper into both concepts and discuss each.
The end of car ownership?
Tesla has been somewhat controversially fixated on the Full Self Driving AI/ML system. This is the backbone of Musk’s vision of CaaS. Musk has been speaking of the generational shift away from big-ticket item ownership for many years.
This generational shift in attitudes is shown in Pymnts.com commenting, “This cohort is less inclined to own vehicles outright, favoring flexibility and future financial goals over traditional car ownership.”
So what would a day in the life of a Robotaxi-subscribing family look like? Instead of you getting up early to get the kids to school, while you might still be chasing them out of bed and into breakfast, you won’t be driving them to school – a Robotaxi will do that. Another car will slide up to your house and drive you to work.
While you work, it will go off and charge up or take your spouse to do the weekly shop. While the spouse isn’t using it, someone else will be — for example taking an old lady to see the doctor or someone else to a job interview.
At the end of the working day, the kids will jump into another Robotaxi from school without your spouse risking a parking fine waiting for them and you will be carried home separately.
Instead of you gobbling dinner down and rushing the kids to after-school activities, Robotaxi will be waiting to take them and you and your spouse can have quality time together, or you can go fishing. The upshot?
- Stress will fall.
- The car will be used most of its time.
- Fewer cars needed on the road.
- Due to the subscription model you’ll not be worried about depreciation/maintenance or tax
That’s a better use for a vehicle instead of wasting $$$ for 18 hours a day isn’t it? There is another EV use model though, where it can be busy and owned. Let’s look at V2x now as a rival to Musk’s vision.
V2x – EVs as energy storage
Another model that will ensure EVs won’t spend their time rotting your bank account out is as energy storage (V2x). Vehicle to grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) utilises the car’s battery to support home or regional energy demand.
With a bidirectional charger, the EV can:
- Cut your home energy bills by charging off-peak and providing energy at peak times
- At a regional level this means fewer spikes in demand and lower carbon use at grid level
- Provide energy during power outages
V2x has been around as a concept for a while, but in a similar timeframe to the robotaxi future, this is set to revolutionise national energy use patterns.
Here’s the evidence: at the 38th International Electric Vehicle Symposium and Exhibition (EVS38) At Goteborg, Sweden, June 15-18, 2025, a paper was presented that showed that V2X can do the job at home. The authors showed, “The EV battery can reliably power a household during peak demand hours even during winter when demand is higher. Since the V2G period is only until 23:00, the passenger EV has enough time to get fully charged before the next morning drive phase.”
In this scenario the daily life of the car wouldn’t be much different to that of your combustion-engine vehicle, except that it would be paying back its depreciation and loans by powering your home. If you’re in a two-car household with one for the spouse/kids and the other for you at work, you might use your work car to power your office — meaning more $$$ in your pay cheque from the boss! Your spouse’s car can drink up solar energy from your roof in the day to release it powering the house in the evening.
Whatever the future, it’s better than what we have now…
EVs are revolutionising the world in far more ways than simply using a different powertrain. Whatever happens will be better for your bank account as well as better for everyone’s health – and yes, the climate benefits too!
