One of them is logically its role as a mobile electricity storage unit. If lots of green power is generated and is then used to charge electric cars, this process will help to balance the imbalance between an excessive amount of green power and a lack of it. In other words, the car can be charged when the sun is shining and/or the wind is blowing – and then return energy at such times as night when you would normally have to switch back to fossil fuels. The vehicle’s battery and bidirectional charging stations make it all possible. The more electric cars enter the market, the more interesting this storage aspect will become.

Exactly – and not only to the place where the energy was generated, but also to the grid. In principle, the technology for this aggregate bidirectional charging process is fully developed and will soon be available on a cost-optimised basis thanks to economies of scale. One key point that still has to be addressed is the somewhat complicated issue of regulation: Up to now, our energy landscape has been based on huge central facilities – things like power plants that generate tremendous quantities of electricity. We are basically talking about a one-way energy street. A two-way street was never planned. We now have to readjust our way of thinking: If we have umpteen million electric vehicles on the road that can draw and return power, we will have a gigantic fleet of rolling energy storage units that are part of a software-supported alliance. Our tax system, for instance, is not prepared for this. We cannot check this off our to-do list yet. But I am confident that this issue can gradually be resolved when the first bidirectional electric cars are introduced in 2022. Some states in the United States have already addressed the issue. In California, for instance, electric school buses that are used for only a few hours in the morning and afternoons and spend the rest of the time sitting on huge car park are used as mobile power storage units and are compensated for this service.

Over the past 100 years, a total of 40 gigawatt hours of storage capacity was created in Germany by pumped-storage hydroelectricity plants – a level that nearly exhausted its potential. With 10 million electric cars, we can generate 500 gigawatt hours in just one decade. And that is just a ballpark figure.

You have to draw a distinction here. If my company is located in a small industrial park, you will certainly have to upgrade your grid technology starting at a particular charging infrastructure level. But there will definitely be no need for a major expansion of grid capacities that you frequently hear about – a number of studies have definitely answered this question. We will be able to solve the challenges related to capacity with intelligent software that – as I mentioned earlier – will open up a number of new avenues. In principle, this is nothing new. Take cloud storage as an example: Not too long ago, every office had a server cabinet that provided the required data-storage capacity. Today, just about every company is using cloud-based solutions and software tools that intelligently manage data traffic.

In our work with company customers, we sense a feeling of uncertainty that goes along with the euphoria – after all, we are talking about a fairly sizeable investment involving an extremely dynamically evolving technology. But experts like us who focus on nothing else come into play here at the very latest. And I can tell you one thing in good conscience: The sooner that you as an entrepreneur focus on the issue of e-mobility, the more experience you gain and the more you think about the future now, the better you will be prepared for tomorrow.