The new era of Electric Vehicles: Rolling out the Energy Storage Solution of Tomorrow - A single case study investigating fleet customers' opportunities and challenges with adopting Vehicle-to-Grid technology, to identify complexities and important considerations when accelerating the implementation.

Abstract

The following thesis investigates the complexities of implementing the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology. It explores the perceived benefits and challenges that fleet customers within an automotive company have towards the technology. The electricity grid is under pressure when EV adoption increases, and V2G capable vehicles have the potential (with bidirectional charging) to allow the EV battery to work as an energy storage solution. Understanding the benefits that fleet customers can see with V2G and the challenges or barriers that need to be overcome can allow the case company to accelerate the implementation and achieve widespread adoption. Interviews with fleet customers and experts within the field have been conducted through an abductive research approach. In addition, a literature review of the theory of technology adoption as well as current literature on V2G benefits and barriers perceived by retail customers is carried out. The results from this study show that fleet customers see V2G as an opportunity to (1) benefit society, (2) a possibility to sell more EVs and (3) create new business opportunities where the fleet customer could fill an aggregator role. On the other hand, important considerations when facing the challenges expressed by customers are to (1) create value for all stakeholders, (2) find early adopters, (3) show transparency for everyone involved, (4) enable actual usage and, (5) to create an easy user experience. Since previous literature only captures the retail side of the customers to automotive companies, this study adds a dimension of the fleet perspectives to current research and brings insights into how they need to be a part of the value chain of V2G. The implications this creates for the case company is that fleet customers need to be carefully considered when creating the business model to ensure that widespread adoption of the technology can take place.