electronics Article Overcoming Bottlenecks for Realizing a Vehicle-to-Grid Infrastructure in Europe through Standardization Sameer Chandrakant Fulari and Geerten van de Kaa *   Citation: Fulari, S.C.; van de Kaa, G. Overcoming Bottlenecks for Realizing a Vehicle-to-Grid Infrastructure in Europe through Standardization. Electronics 2021, 10, 582. https:// doi.org/10.3390/electronics10050582 Academic Editor: Sara Deilami Received: 18 December 2020 Accepted: 18 February 2021 Published: 2 March 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Department of Values, Technology, and Innovation, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, 2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands; sameerfulari@gmail.com * Correspondence: g.vandekaa@tudelft.nl Abstract: This paper focuses on committee–market standards battles for the case of vehicle-to-grid technology in Europe. In this battle, standards such as CHArge de MOve (CHAdeMO) and Combined Charging System (CCS) Combo are competing. The paper identifies relevant factors with the help of a literature review and expert interviews. Furthermore, the importance weights were established for the factors. The paper ends with a discussion and conclusion in which the theoretical contributions, practical implications, limitations, and recommendations for further research are discussed. Keywords: standards; standards battles; vehicle-to-grid technology; BWM; best–worst method 1. Introduction The transportation sector is considered one of the significant contributors to the global carbon footprint [1], and most countries are moving toward the electrification of their transportation sector. Electric vehicles (EVs) became popular in the last decade. However, most of these vehicles are parked during peak hours when renewable energy generation through solar cells is optimal. This results in a tremendous amount of underutilized energy in the batteries of EVs. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology [2,3] makes it possible to share that power with the grid. An essential aspect of V2G technology pertains to the charging equipment used to connect the EVs with the charging stations for charging and discharging (also known as bidirectional charging). Irrespective of the significant advantages of V2G technology, it is not being used on a large scale yet because no single dominant standard for charging is available. Instead, various types of standards are competing against each other, including CHArge de MOve (CHAdeMO) and Combined Charging System (CCS) Combo. CHAdeMO, which originated in Japan and was developed by a consortium of auto manufacturers, is currently capable of bidirectional charging, while CCS Combo is expected to offer V2G charging by 2025 [4]. IEC, a formal standardization organization, developed the stan- dards underlying CCS Combo. Although the charging stations around European countries include either or both of the two charging standards, the manufacturers of cars, home chargers, and home batteries are mostly implementing one standard. This may create high levels of potential uncertainty among consumers when buying these manufacturers’ equipment, because the standard that is applied will become another decision criteria for consumers. The decision for a standard will depend upon the value that it offers. This value may be determined by technological characteristics such as the charging time, but economic effects will also determine it. Network effects refer to a situation in which the value of technology increases the more it becomes adopted by other users. For example, the value will depend upon the number of charging stations that apply the same standard along the routes that are used by the consumers (direct network effects). The value will also depend upon the other products already owned by consumers that apply similar standards Electronics 2021, 10, 582. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10050582 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics