EVs don't need to be charged at peak usage times. We have ours scheduled to charge starting at 11pm every day (which is just before the lowest demand part of th

EVs don't need to be charged at peak usage times. We have ours scheduled to charge starting at 11pm every day (which is just before the lowest demand part of the day in my area), and most EVs include this functionality. And as EVs become more common, I could absolutely see them being a useful tool in power generation. I'd absolutely allow the power company to control the home-charging of my car for a discount (and some agreement that i'd be able to charge to full at least once a day). The power company could enable more EVs to charge when there is a valley in demand, and turn some off when there are spikes. And all of that can happen without vehicle-to-grid systems which come with their own bag of tradeoffs. Also, keep in mind that gas engines aren't 100% efficient (IIRC they are under 50% efficient). So even though there is theoretically 1.7 mw/h of power in a barrel of oil (I'm taking your number as true here), I assume that cars are only using a fraction of that (especially after all the refinement as well, which I'm assuming cuts into that efficiency even more).