InsightsPractice
PracticeP095Energy & MobilityBy Fabrice Macarty · Founder, CEO

The V2G Revenue Model

Four commercial V2G designs are live or launching in 2026, and each divides the same battery differently. Dispatch right, hardware book, settlement form and market gate: four levers to read where value, cost and risk accumulate before signing.

16,000 km
of free driving a year is the supplier-led promise in Germany. Octopus Energy’s tariff for the Ford Capri and Explorer, launching in summer 2026, pays €30 a month above 300 plugged-in hours, up to €360 a year, plus an 18-cent discount per kWh on a 33-cent household rate. The supplier holds the dispatch; the carmaker enables the car. (Octopus Energy Germany, 9 February 2026)
1 million
vehicles on Volkswagen’s MEB platform are already technically prepared for bidirectional charging in Europe. From the fourth quarter of 2026, VW and its subsidiary Elli plan to sell them a fully integrated V2G package and to pay owners a fixed availability compensation, independent of trading performance, while Elli trades the pooled flexibility on EPEX Spot. (Volkswagen Group, 16 April 2026)
Business ModelsEnergy, Utilities & Grid
The decision stakes

One battery,
four ways to divide it.

Vehicle-to-Grid delivers its full value only through the connection of vehicles, infrastructure and the energy market. And that is precisely why we established Elli as the energy interface within the Group.Giovanni Palazzo, CEO Elli, Volkswagen Group, April 16, 2026

A V2G agreement allocates four things: the dispatch signal, the charger, the customer contract and the market access. Each lever decides where value, cost and risk can accumulate rather than who keeps them. The technology is broadly the same; the split sits in the architecture around the battery.

P×R=V reads here as an allocation question. The performance is the pooled flexibility; the responsibility is a contract that makes control, cost, risk and upside legible to each participant, driver included. An allocation the parties can read is one they can renegotiate.

The decision tool

Four levers
of value capture.

01

Dispatch Right

Establish who sends the charge and discharge signal to the vehicle, and write it down before the tariff. In the Volkswagen design, Elli’s trading desk dispatches against EPEX Spot around the clock; in the Ford design, Octopus schedules the sessions and the driver keeps a departure time, a minimum state of charge and an off switch for feed-in; in the Dutch pilot, Vattenfall decides the evening window. Whoever holds the signal holds the flexibility, and flexibility is what the market pays for.

Whoever holds the signal decides how hard the battery works; whoever holds the warranty pays if it ages faster. In the Ford design those are two balance sheets, Octopus and Ford; VW keeps both in the Group and can pool 1 million MEB vehicles under one signal. The lever names who dispatches, who warrants and what floor protects the pack.
02

Hardware Book

Trace who buys, installs and depreciates the bidirectional charger and the smart meter, and who is liable for the battery. Elli sells the DC charger inside the package and refers the meter to a metering operator; Octopus has the customer buy the Ambibox in addition; the Vattenfall pilot supplies the charging point through the carmakers. Each choice moves a capital cost onto a different balance sheet, and the balance sheet carrying it reveals which return the operator needs to recover somewhere in the model.

A charger financed by the operator is a customer acquisition cost recovered through the tariff; a charger bought by the driver is capital the driver risks and expects paid back. The hardware book names who funds, who carries the residual value and which party has already priced its return into the deal.
03

Settlement Form

Classify how the driver is paid: a variable payment per kWh discharged, a fixed availability fee, a credit in free kilometres, or a tariff discount. A fixed fee, as Volkswagen announces, leaves price risk with the operator; free mileage, as Octopus and Ford promise, is bounded by a €30 monthly bonus earned only above 300 plugged-in hours; a six-month reimbursement, as in the Vattenfall pilot, is a trial budget rather than a contract. Convert each form into euros per year at the operator’s own assumptions before comparing.

Payment in kind is the most common form so far because it hides the exchange rate: the driver sees kilometres, the operator sees the wholesale value of the hours. The settlement form names who carries price risk, who carries volume risk and what euro value the driver’s share represents.
04

Market Gate

Map the rules that size the pool being shared, country by country, because they change the split without any renegotiation. Germany removed the double grid fee on 1 January 2026 and opened settlement without a second meter on 1 April; PJM admits aggregated distributed resources to its capacity auction from the May 2026 round and splits regulation into up and down products in October 2026. One rule set changes the economics of the pool for the next, and the operator holding market access sees the change first.

Regulation is the lever no single actor controls. The market gate names who can monetise the pool, who bears the regulatory risk and who receives the upside when the rules widen.
The proof

Volkswagen / Elli

Fully integrated V2G package for private customers in Germany, with vehicle, app, tariff, smart meter, DC charger and installation. Pre-registration since June 2026, launch planned for the fourth quarter. Wolfsburg, April 2026.

€700-900

a year is the best-case market estimate Volkswagen cites for an owner who makes battery capacity available and adapts charging behaviour. In the first phase the owner is paid a compensation independent of trading performance, set by the level of flexibility chosen; Elli’s own trading team markets the pooled capacity on EPEX Spot 24 hours a day. (Volkswagen Group press release, 16 April 2026)

Volkswagen’s offer is worth reading as an organisation chart rather than as a tariff. The Group built Elli as its energy interface and has assigned it the five functions that other V2G designs distribute across partners: the electricity tariff, the charger, the app control, the aggregation of vehicle batteries and market access through an in-house trading desk on EPEX Spot. Its press release states the purpose without euphemism: a fully integrated platform model with the aim of retaining the customer interface and key value creation within its own ecosystem. The driver’s side of the split follows from that design. In the initial phase the owner receives a compensation independent of trading performance and set by the flexibility chosen, so the variable result of trading, up or down, stays with Elli. Two figures remain to be observed once the offer launches, the level at which the fixed compensation is set against the €700 to €900 best case the release cites, and how much of the gap the Group discloses.

Volkswagen set the split in its organisation chart: a fixed fee for the driver, the trading result for the Group. Other designs divide the same battery differently.

The full case

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