Autonomous vehicles are more than cars without drivers. They’re “robots on wheels” — and they will need enormous amounts of electricity at the grid edge.
In this episode of the Energy Changemakers Podcast, host Elisa Wood talks with Mike Calise, CEO of EV charging company Tellus Power, about why the rise of autonomous fleets could make microgrids and distributed energy a strategic necessity.
Calise sees two massive transformations colliding: the electrification and automation of transportation, and a power system already confronting soaring demand from AI and data centers. Microgrids could help bridge the two by generating and managing electricity close to where autonomous vehicles operate — while bidirectional charging allows the batteries inside those vehicles to become grid assets rather than simply new loads.
The conversation explores a real-world example at Oakland Unified School District, where 74 electric school buses can act as dispatchable batteries, returning energy to buildings or the grid when the buses are sitting idle. It also looks ahead to robotaxis, delivery vehicles, drones and other forms of “physical AI” — and what it will take to power them as they scale.
Calise calls it a collision between the multi-trillion-dollar energy and transportation industries. At the center of that collision may be one of distributed energy’s biggest opportunities yet: using microgrids, storage and vehicle-to-grid technology to power the machines emerging at the edge.
Key Takeaways
For Policymakers
- Clean-tech job creation has proven bipartisan in practice: Mike notes his company’s Irvine manufacturing facility has grown under both the Biden and current administrations, even as subsidy and tax-credit policy has shifted.
- Government grants are not a substitute for market fundamentals — Tritium’s story shows that even favorable policy and a White House visit couldn’t offset a funding shortfall from its de-SPAC process.
For Utilities
- Utilities face a two-sided demand crunch: centralized, always-on base load from AI data centers (headed toward roughly 106 gigawatts of demand within a decade) on one side, and fast-growing, distributed demand from EVs and autonomous fleets at the edge on the other.
- Fleet batteries — like the 74 buses in Oakland — can be recruited as dispatchable, V2G-enabled grid assets that ease demand charges and reduce reliance on peaker plants, rather than treated purely as new load.
For DER Developers & Vendors
- EV battery costs are nearing the ~$100/kWh threshold Mike identifies as cost parity with internal-combustion drivetrains, which he argues removes the last major economic barrier to electrified fleets.
- A successful microgrid deployment (Oakland) required coordinating multiple vendors — utility, school district, fleet operator, bus manufacturer, and fleet-management software — a template other DER developers may need to replicate.
For Investors
- Tritium’s experience is a cautionary tale: strong technology, a growing market, and political tailwinds are not sufficient if a de-SPAC raise falls short of what a capital-intensive manufacturing scale-up requires.
- Mike frames EV and DER growth as a multi-decade megatrend that shouldn’t be judged on any single company’s quarterly results — a framing investors may want to weigh against shorter-term volatility.
For Local Governments
- The Oakland Unified School District case study shows a concrete financial model: replacing diesel buses with V2G-enabled electric buses cut fuel and demand costs enough to help move the district’s transportation budget from deficit to surplus, freeing funds for areas like teacher pay.
- Removing diesel exhaust from bus routes also addresses a public-health concern — particulate exposure for children — alongside the financial case.
For General Listeners
- Mike’s reframe of autonomous vehicles as “robots on wheels” (or robots in the sky, as drones) suggests the coming shift is less about cars and more about physical AI — with vehicle deaths, currently a leading cause of death for young children, as a stakes-setting example of what’s at risk.
- His definition of “the grid edge” — credited to his daughter — as simply “where people live and thrive” offers a plain-language way to understand why distributed energy matters, without needing to know the technical distinction between transmission and distribution.
