Residential Energy Storage from Repurposed Electric Vehicle Batteries - Market Overview and Development of a Service-Centered Business Model

Bräuer Sebastian, Monhof Markus, Klör Benjamin, Plenter Florian, Siemen Christian, Beverungen Daniel

Abstract

Sales figures for electric vehicles still lag behindexpectations. Most prominently, limited driving ranges,missing charging stations, and high purchase costs makeelectric vehicles less attractive than gas-operated vehicles. Ahuge share of these costs is caused by the electric vehiclebattery. Since the batteries' performance degrades over useand time, replacements become necessary to restore thevehicle's driving range, acceleration, and charging speed.Despite the degradation, repurposing used batteries for afurther use in less demanding second-life application scenariosseems feasible and desirable. However, neither a market norbusiness models for further using electric vehicle batteriesexist, yet. In this paper, we set out to review existing businessmodels for residential battery energy storage systems andsuggest a re-design to open up a market for storage systemsthat build on used electric vehicle batteries. The re-design isinformed by lemon-market theory. To mitigate market failurecaused by asymmetric information, the re-designed businessmodel strongly bases on offering value-added services. Theservices compensate perceived defects of used batteries andsignal their quality. With these results, we provide muchneededconceptual insights on how business models forrepurposed electric vehicle batteries could be established.