In this module we have looked at incentives for electric vehicles from two different perspectives. In the first part we looked at direct financial and non-financial incentives from a government perspective. In the second part we looked at ways to make electric vehicles a cheaper option by allowing them to trade on the energy market and making money in that way.

In the first lecture professor Zofia Lukszo explained some of the details of financial incentives. She explained why point-of-sale incentives are more effective than post-purchase grants. The lecture laid some ground rules for designing financial incentives making them effective and fair.

In the second lecture we looked at some non-financial incentives to promote the sales of electric vehicles. A major barrier to overcome is establishing a public charging infrastructure that suits the needs of (future) EV drivers. Depending on the layout of your city a right balance between slower and faster charging infrastructure is needed. Professor Zofia Lukszo explained how as a policy maker you can speed up building such an infrastructure. She also discussed other policy measures such as free parking, access to bus lanes etc.

In the third lecture we looked at a way to make money with electric vehicles, the vehicle-2-grid concept. Professor Zofia Lukszo explained why fuel cell electric vehicles are a good fit in a future in which we are more reliant on renewable energy sources. Using the Car as a Power Plant conceptshe explained that a single vehicle can produce enough energy to power over 100 households!

In the last lecture of this module, Esther Park Lee took us into depth on the Vehicle-2-Grid concept by introducing possible contract typesaggregators can provide. She explained the differences between price, volume and control based contracts and made clear which type of contract is most suitable in which occasion. By using the right contract, consumers can be transformed in ‘prosumers’, being a small power plant themselves.

Further reading

• • • • International EV Policy Council, Driving the Market for Plug-in Vehicles: Understanding Financial Purchase Incentives, 2018, Available at: https://phev.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/Purchase-Incentives-Policy-Guide-March-2018.pdf
      • International EV Policy Council, Driving the Market for Plug-in Vehicles: Understanding Reoccurring Incentives, 2018, Available at: https://phev.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/Reocurring-Incentives-Policy-Guide-March-2018.pdf
      • Rick Wolbertus and Bas Gerzon, “Improving Electric Vehicle Charging Station Efficiency through Pricing,” Journal of Advanced Transportation, vol. 2018, Article ID 4831951, 11 pages, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/4831951.
      • Ad van Wijk and Leendert Verhoef, “Our car as a power plant”, 2014, IOS Press e-book, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Freely available at: http://ebooks.iospress.nl/book/our-car-as-power-plant
      • Esther H. Park Lee, Zofia Lukszo, and Paulien Herder, “Conceptualization of Vehicle-to-Grid Contract Types and Their Formalization in Agent-Based Models,” Complexity, vol. 2018, Article ID 3569129, 11 pages, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/3569129.