Volvo Group has formed a new business division, Volvo Energy, to streamline electrification. They will look to bundle internal activities around energy and charging but also provide used batteries to external customers for energy storage solutions.

In a joint project with Impact Clean Power Technology and TAURON Polska Energia, Polish electric bus manufacturer Solaris is exploring the secondary use of lithium-ion cells as energy storage devices in stationary applications.

FCA Italy and Engie EPS have been awarded a contract by Italian grid operator Terna to manage 25 megawatts of electricity. This should provide ultra-fast frequency control services to Terna via a planned vehicle-to-grid (V2G) system at FCA’s Mirafiori headquarters site.

In a former coal-fired power plant in Elverlingsen, Germany, a new stationary battery storage system made up of of electric car batteries has been put into operation. The project was jointly developed by Renault, the technology company The Mobility House and the electricity storage system expert Fenecon.

Mitsubishi Motors is aiming for a 50 per cent share of electrified vehicles by 2030, with the main focus on plug-in hybrids as stated in the manufacturers’ new “environmental plan”.

Renault is putting two new projects for the second-life use of batteries from electric vehicles in the spotlight. Both ‘Advanced Battery Storage’ in France and ‘SmartHubs’ in the UK are aimed at helping to balance power grids as the share of renewable energy increases.

BMW Group UK has announced a new partnership with Off Grid Energy to create a sustainable second life solution for its electric car batteries. Off Grid Energy will reuse spent battery modules from BMW EVs to adapt them for use as mobile power storage units.

Volvo Buses is providing the batteries from its electric buses with a second life as stationary storage on a large scale. Following individual pilot projects, Volvo Buses has now concluded an agreement with Batteryloop, that covers all batteries for the manufacturer’s electric buses worldwide.

Hyundai Motor Group and SK Innovation have agreed to work together to develop a sustainable ecosystem for electric vehicle batteries. The cooperation of the South Korean companies will include various business areas not directly related to cell manufacturing.

The California Energy Commission has granted funding of around 2.6 million euros to CleanSpark and ReJoule. The companies will use the funds to advance their research into the second-life of batteries, the latter delivered by Ford.

Honda has taken a one-percent stake in CATL as the company seeks a stable supply of battery cells and also closer cooperation in the areas of development and research as well as recycling and second-life approaches.

Honda is expanding its partnership in Europe with the French recycling specialist SNAM. In future, SNAM will collect batteries from Honda dealers and authorised recycling facilities in 22 countries and test them for their suitability for recycling and further processing.

The Swiss energy group Alpiq and Mercedes-Benz Energy have concluded a supply agreement for the stationary use of batteries from electric vehicles. The storage unit has a capacity of 1.5 MW and a gross capacity of 1.4 MWh, which is also possible to scale up.

VW has distributed flexible rapid-charging points throughout the Wolfsburg city area, which EV drivers can use free of charge for 80 weeks. Some of the charging pillars are to be used flexibly at major events.

The University of Warwick has developed a procedure for Nissan that allows a quick assessment of the suitability of used electric car batteries for use in stationary energy storage. The classification works at the battery pack and battery module level.

At the depot of the Hamburg-Holstein transport authority (VHH) in Hamburg Bergedorf, a stationary 500 kWh storage facility – fitted with discarded batteries – has been connected to the depot’s charging network. The aim is to optimise the power supply at the depot.

Gotthard FASTcharge (GOFAST) recently opened one of Switzerland’s largest fast-charging parks at a service station, using eight Nissan Leaf batteries as a buffer. “Fake news” of a diesel generator being used circulated so stubbornly on social media, however, that GOFAST now took counteraction.

Volvo Buses aims to give its e-bus batteries a second life. In cooperation with Stena Property and Stena Recycling, the company will use its electric bus batteries as stationary energy storage in the Fyrklövern complex in Gothenburg.

As of today, visitors to the Johan Cruijff Arena (JCA) in Amsterdam can actively contribute to the power supply of the arena with their electric cars by integrating them into the stadium’s power grid. The first of 15 bidirectional charging stations in the JCA is now officially in operation.

The three-year strategic mobility partnership between Volkswagen and the City of Hamburg concluded in August 2016 has been extended. The most important news within the framework of the extension is that the WeShare car-sharing service will expand to Hamburg from spring next year.

In Paris, Renault electric car batteries have been given a second life on the Seine. They supply electricity to the ‘Black Swan’ electric motorboat, which is used for two-hour excursions in Paris for groups of up to eight people. And, the operator has bigger plans.

The bus maker Irizar and the charging infrastructure provider Ibil have concluded a cooperation agreement to give EV batteries a second life. Ibil will use spent batteries from Irizar’s electric buses as stationary energy storage.

The Volkswagen-Northvolt cooperation is taking off as they launch a first pilot production for battery cells at Volkswagen’s Salzgitter plant. Production is to scale up to 16 GWh at the end of 2023 with Volkswagen investing around €1Bn.

Researchers from Warwick University have succeeded in repurposing Jaguar I-Pace batteries as a small energy storage system. Each unit contains about 2 kWh energy capacity, and can power “a small shop, a farm, or multiple residential homes,” claims the team.

Daimler subsidiary Mercedes-Benz Energy and BAIC subsidiary Beijing Electric Vehicle (BJEV) have entered into a development partnership for Second Life battery storage systems in China. The partners intend to jointly build the first second-life energy storage system at their Beijing location.

Audi has opened a stationary energy storage facility with a capacity of 1.9 MWh on the EUREF campus in Berlin. The lithium-ion batteries in second use come from development e-tron vehicles and tests various interaction scenarios between electric cars and the energy grid.

London-based Moixa plans to develop a virtual power plant (VPP) that will combine solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. The VPP could include hundreds of households, schools and other facilities in southern England and Moixa aims to eventually scale the network up to 17 MW.

Renault has launched the first large-scale bi-directional charging pilot projects in Europe, starting in Utrecht, the Netherlands and on the Portuguese island of Porto Santo. Similar projects will follow in five more European countries with the aim to develop services and gather learnings for future harmonisation.

The recently announced Volkswagen pilot plant for recycling electric car battery materials in Salzgitter, which will go into operation in 2020, is designed to initially produce 1,200 tonnes per year. The project in Salzgitter is to be followed by further recycling plants in the next few years.

A project in Gothenburg is using old Volvo bus batteries as a stationary energy storage with 200 kWh capacity. The pilot project is being run by the bus manufacturer Göteborg Energi, the housing association Riksbyggen and the Johanneberg Science Park.