Electric vehicles present business opportunities – newly updated book shows how

The EU-funded COTEVOS project ended in 2016 but the project has just updated its white book ‘Business Opportunities and Interoperability Assessment for EV Integration’. Electric vehicles (Evs) offer many benefits and outstanding business opportunities, but they also present a great challenge for the electricity distribution network infrastructure and both these strands are fully explored in COTEVOS'' book. One key factor in getting Evs mainstream is the issue of interoperability.

Interoperability would allow a variety of systems from the same or different vendors to exchange information and perform required functions, thereby simplifying communication and bringing down barriers. This facility, as it relates to Evs and the electrical power systems, is a key focus point of the book which also takes on board the technologies necessary, potential business models and EV system architecture. The book puts forward an outline of a roadmap for interoperability assessment and test development, while the best practices presented offer industry actors a valuable insight into the future of EV development. It also suggests lines of thought for researchers interested in enhancing their ICT testing capacities.

COTEVOS (Concepts, Capacities and Methods for Testing EV systems and their interoperability within the Smartgrids) addressed topics such as the broad range of charging modalities, grid stability constraints and consumer demand, along with a pan-European market for both new and used Evs and greater flexibility in choosing energy providers. In order to facilitate EU-wide rollout of electro-mobility, COTEVOS employed a common testing approach in the process of conformity and interoperability assessment to further the notion of one-time-only equipment testing.

Electro-mobility offers a viable way to make Europe’s transport both more efficient and less polluting, but the market has had a number of false starts. In 2015 the sale of electric cars reached the important milestone of taking 1% of the market share. Sales doubled in 2015 and Transport and Environment were reporting an uptake of 500 000 by the end of 2016. However, although Europe is the world’s second largest market for Evs, with particularly strong sales in Norway and the Netherlands, there is no single market for electric cars in Europe. This means there is no common sales or recharging infrastructure in most EU countries. If Europe is to become a leader in electromobility and compete with China, this needs to change.

COTEVOS brought together partners from across disciplines and countries to help turn this around by addressing key issues such as the cross-national transparency, the interaction between grid infrastructure and vehicles and operational reliability, while reducing the time-to-market of equipment. Nine countries were involved in the project with 11 partners coming from some the EU’s principle research institutions. Third parties included one from the USA.

For more information, please see:
CORDIS project web page