Addressing the Challenges of a Cross-Industry Consortium Project for the Integration of Electric Vehicle in the Energy System

Cross-industry collaboration is needed to meet the challenge of integrating electric vehicles into the electricity grid. The unIT-e² project meets this requirement with a consortium of partners covering the entire value chain—from electric vehicles to charging, IT and metering infrastructure to grid operators. At the same time, this special feature brings with it a number of challenges, such as the different backgrounds of the partners in terms of technical know-how. In order to meet these challenges, the project is set up by a consistent and uniform project structure. This includes on the one hand the division into subprojects and practice clusters and on the other hand the uniform approach applied across them. Another special feature of the collaboration between the energy and automotive industries is the different “markets” that they serve. While the energy industry is predominantly based on the German market and regulation, the automotive and component manufacturers aim to develop globally marketable products. unIT-e² addresses this issue by integrating a European perspective in the synthesis and a subsequent analysis regarding the applicability of the developed approaches to other European countries.