With the Neue Klasse, BMW vehicles become an active part of the energy ecosystem for the first time.Marcus Krieg, Head of New Business Models, BMW Group, V2G launch with E.ON, February 2026
While the CFO prices the bonus with a utility or an aggregator, the CTO’s battery engineers set the protection limits and after-sales carries the warranty, and the clause that decides who runs the dispatch, and so who keeps the spread and who decides the wear, can end up written by whichever of the three signs last.
P×R=V: the R is writing down who runs the dispatch and within which limits the battery is used; the V is read by the customer who stays plugged in and the partner who markets the flexibility.
BMW with E.ON in February 2026 and Volkswagen with its subsidiary Elli in June 2026 published the same connection bonus, up to 720 euros a year for keeping the car plugged in, and what the grid pays above that bonus goes to whoever runs the dispatch.
BMW’s release of 9 February 2026 says the carmaker and E.ON developed the charging algorithm together, with the tariff and the V2G feed-in contract supplied by E.ON. Elli sells the tariff and markets the flexibility on a platform supplied by The Mobility House, which its release of October 2024 says pools and trades the batteries behind Renault’s Mobilize V2G, launched in France that month.
Both offers pay a connection bonus by the hour, 60 euros a month for 250 hours according to their releases; BMW’s says the bonus accrues whether the car charges or discharges, and Volkswagen and Elli say the compensation is independent of trading performance in an initial phase, so the spread between that bonus and what the markets pay stays with whoever sells the flexibility.
European law opens the battery’s data to any party the owner authorises: Directive (EU) 2023/2413, which member states were to transpose by 21 May 2025, requires national rules that make carmakers give real-time access to state of health and state of charge. It names no party to run the dispatch, which the owner’s contracts decide.
The battery carries the carmaker’s name, and what it earns on the grid follows the contract that runs it.
Volkswagen / Elli
Wolfsburg · The group’s own energy subsidiary runs the offer · The aggregation engine comes from a specialist.
Volkswagen Group MEB vehicles in Europe technically prepared for bidirectional charging, around 360,000 of them in Germany, according to the Volkswagen Group and Elli release of 23 June 2026. German customers have been able to register interest since that day, with orders planned for the end of 2026; Volkswagen and Elli published the first eligible cars as those on software version 3.5 with a battery of 77 kWh or more, and all models on version 6.
The Orchestrator · April 2026
The Volkswagen and Elli release of 16 April 2026 presented Elli as the orchestrator of an integrated energy ecosystem: the electricity tariff, the charger, the app, the aggregation of the batteries and the access to the energy markets, with its own trading team on EPEX Spot around the clock. In an initial phase, the release said, customers will be compensated for making the battery available, independent of trading performance.
The Package · June 2026
Volkswagen and Elli announced the fee on 23 June 2026: up to 60 euros a month for 250 hours connected, sessions of at least three hours, 720 euros at most in the first contract year, for a limited number of customers. The Mobility House supplies the FlexEngine platform and the charger; the driver sets in the app when the car must be ready and with what minimum charge.
Read together, the two releases describe a group whose subsidiary carries the tariff, the app, the fee and the sale of the flexibility, and which buys the aggregation platform and the charger from The Mobility House. The answer to the question of who runs the dispatch is therefore Elli, on a supplier’s platform. A carmaker weighing the same choice can start from that division of the work.
The Partnership Signal
Two other constructions are already on the market. BMW and E.ON launched theirs in February 2026 with the same driver bonus, the carmaker’s app and the utility’s tariff and feed-in contract. In France, Renault’s Mobilize V2G was launched in October 2024 with The Mobility House pooling the batteries and trading the energy, the driver’s contract being with Mobilize Power, the Renault Group’s energy brand. Ford with Octopus Energy and Mercedes-Benz, with The Mobility House as technology provider, have since announced German offers that also pay for hours plugged in, electrive reported on 9 February and 13 October 2026. Around all of them the law moves the data and names no dispatcher: Directive (EU) 2023/2413 and Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 open the battery’s state of health to parties the owner authorises, aggregators included, and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/656 makes ISO 15118-20, a communication protocol between car and charger, mandatory for chargers from January 2027, CharIN’s paper of April 2026 says, without saying who may send the signal.
Run the dispatch
The performance case is the spread. In the BMW and Volkswagen offers the connection bonus is fixed, up to 720 euros a year according to their releases, and the party that runs the dispatch sells the flexibility into a European demand-side market whose gross value McKinsey estimated in October 2025 at 4 billion euros in 2024 and up to 12 billion by 2030, 8 billion of it for industrial and commercial sites. The difference, after the hardware offers and the platform fees, is the margin of the model, and the party that runs the dispatch carries it, including when the markets pay less than the bonus. A carmaker that keeps the dispatch keeps that difference and its risk; one that hands it to a partner keeps the car, and receives the share the contract sets.
Answer for the battery
P×R=V: the R is to write down who runs the dispatch and within which limits the battery is cycled, and to tell the driver, who under European law can read the battery’s state of health and pass it to a third party. The V is rendered by the customer who stays plugged in, and by the partner who markets the flexibility on terms it can rely on. The responsible version of the offer names the party that answers for the wear, so that the second life of the battery has a price someone has already agreed.
The full case
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