According to a study by EY and Eurelectric, EVs represent 3.3 million vehicles today and are expected to reach 65 million vehicles by 2030 - and 130 million by 2035. According to the authors this would require 65 million chargers by 2035, 85% of which would be residential. How can we use smart tech to Enable EVs and charging infrastructure to benefit rather than burden the grid?
Marc Mültin, Founder & CEO of Switch and co-author of the ISO 15118 protocol, highlights the benefits of V2G and V2H through bidirectional charging. "In the end, we need to incentivise homeowners to participate in these grid to vehicle efforts to assure them that they firstly don’t have an empty battery when they need it and second of all that the warranty of the battery doesn’t drop down and that they have a guarantee from the vehicle manufacturers, even if they participate in these vehicle to grid programmes that their battery will be fine."
Max Scherer, COO at Monta, says, "we believe the biggest lever towards making EV charging affordable, or much more than affordable…really cheap, is increasing literacy about energy pricing, and buying energy, and where you get it from, where you draw those amounts of energy. I think, to a large extent this is what our industry is…what our mandate is out there, to educate...For most people in Western Europe, it is still the first time ever they buy an EV, so its all first time buyers who need to learn a lot when they go out there."
Robert Labinski, Head of Electrification at Octopus Energy, adds, "traditionally, the market has assumed that consumers are disengaged, that they don’t want to participate, and that they’re digitally illiterate in some senses. My parents are 70, they both have smartphones, they can hail an Uber, they can smart charge an EV- no problem. ...if we can translate the benefit of being actively involved and take away the complexity of the decision-making in the really hard parts of the market, then you will get mass adoption of that technology."
Amrutha Venugopal, VP eMobility & Grid Edge at Siemens, says "technology is the key enabler and contributor, but what is also important is to look at it from a market structure and business model which kind of incentivises and has the power to influence these stakeholders in the whole mix."