Willingness of employees to accept bidirectional charging at the workplace

Abstract

Achieving the climate goals requires a transformation of the mobility and energy sector. By using bidirectional charging, the storage capacity of electric vehicles can stabilize the increasingly unbalanced power grids. Parked employee and company vehicles can be used as fleet power plant at the workplace. However, this use case and the willingness of employees to participate have so far been neglected in the literature. User acceptance is a crucial basis for the introduction of new technologies. This study uses an online survey in German companies based on a choice-based conjoint analysis to understand the preferences of 772 employees to provide their vehicles for bidirectional charging. The results show the high relevance of battery aging and mandatory plug-in time, while remuneration and minimum range are less relevant at the workplace compared to other use cases. Significant differences were identified between employees with company cars and leased or cash-purchased private cars.