Final step to the EV4EU project: showcasing final results at TRA 2026

On May 19th, the EV4EU project reached a crucial milestone at the Transport Research Arena (TRA) 2026 in Budapest by presenting its results and discussing the future of its developed solutions.

Hosted at the Hungexpo Congress and Exhibition Center, the “EV4EU: From V2X Innovation to Implementation in Europe’s Energy System” Session provided a platform to showcase the project’s ambitious 48-month journey. Above all, it brought the Consortium and key stakeholders together for a final discussion during the project’s lifecycle.

The goal of the meeting was clear, and the three session panels aligned with the project’s core strategy: redefine and develop solutions to support the mass adoption of electric vehicles in Europe.

The event host, Ana Rita Nunes, project manager at INESC-ID, kicked things off and welcomed the attendees, opening the session with the premiere and release of the project’s final overview video. It offered an interactive look at the main developments and advancements across the project’s four demo sites.

The opening session continued with remarks from project coordinator Hugo Morais, who shared a quick look into the project’s big numbers and main achievements, setting the stage for the upcoming presentations and discussions.

Session I: Lessons Learned from the Four EV4EU Demonstrators

The first session started with an overview of the results from the project’s four demonstrators based in Portugal, Slovenia, Greece, and Denmark. Moderated by Cindy P. Guzman from INESC-ID, the session featured as speakers:

• Samuel Matias (EDP NEW) on the Portuguese Demonstrator
• Andreja Smole (GEN-I) on the Slovenian Demonstrator
• Antonios Koutounidis (HEDNO) on the Greek Demonstrator
• Xihai Cao (DTU) on the Danish Demonstrator

Here’s a quick wrap-up of the demonstrators performance and achievements:

• The Portuguese Demonstrator: Featuring test sites on São Miguel Island, Azores, this pilot integrated unidirectional and bidirectional charging points with electric vehicles across residential households, a public building, and a utility company. Supported by optimization and forecasting algorithms, the pilot demonstrated high technical feasibility, achieving an 8.6% average household charging cost reduction and up to a 21.9% increase in renewable energy source integration. 
• The Slovenian Demonstrator: This pilot integrated virtual power plant functionality and local market platforms across office buildings and school environments. The trial successfully activated substantial flexible capacity across hundreds of charging and discharging tests. The lessons learned validated technical operations and market chains end-to-end, proving that V2X provides concrete added value over standard smart charging.
• The Greek Demonstrator: Located in Athens, this pilot focused on providing flexibility services in public charging environments using a specialized supervision platform to manage overvoltage, overload, and overconsumption through dynamic pricing and flexible capacity contracts. The field demos and large-scale system simulations achieved high user satisfaction and validated peak shaving capabilities. The main takeaways highlighted that site accessibility and municipality familiarity with licensing are critical, and that carefully tuned business model incentives are vital to avoid unintended emissions or financial losses.
• The Danish Demonstrator: Operating at the DTU Risø Campus and Bornholm, this pilot applied a distributed control architecture to manage parking lot charging clusters. The algorithms successfully reduced three-phase power unbalances in heterogeneous fleets, maximized local renewable utilization, and delivered cost and carbon reductions. The trial highlighted the discrepancy between actual user needs and user inputs, proving that pricing schemes must be designed to mitigate greedy user requests.

Following the Demos presentations, Matej Zajc from the University of Ljubljana delivered a performance assessment of the demos, focused on three main pillars:

1. V2X Business Models
2. V2X Use Case Repository
3. Regulatory Analysis

While differences in local infrastructure and regulations across the four countries prevented having a completely unified KPI matrix, the cross-project effort successfully evaluated flexibility across power, energy, and time domains. A major conclusion was that a robust data infrastructure is a fundamental requirement for successfully evaluating mass-scale V2X deployments.

Session II: Unlocking Market Potential and Defining a Roadmap for Solutions

The second session shifted focus from trial results to commercial readiness, project exploitation, innovation portfolios, and future recommendations. Moderated by INESC-ID Communications Manager Mariana Carmo, the session featured three core presentations:

• Exploitation Strategy (Joana Leite, Smart Energy Lab): To develop this plan, the SEL team was supported by the EU’s Horizon Results Booster service, which helped effectively identify Key Exploitable Results (KERs). The project mapped out 16 KERs across business models, technologies, and tools. The analysis concluded that the developed solutions are approaching market readiness with intermediate to high maturity, though widespread deployment is still constrained by lagging national regulatory frameworks for V2X.
• Innovation Strategy (Andreja Smole, GEN-I): The project delivered a portfolio of 113 innovations, dominated by 82 breakthrough solutions. Featuring a high average technology readiness level (TRL), these innovations target grid services, smart charging, and user-centric designs to directly support Europe’s clean energy and e-mobility transitions.
• Roadmap, Regulatory Framework, and Recommendations (Hugo Morais, INESC-ID): This presentation outlined the path to mass deployment and highlighted remaining operational challenges. Key insights emphasized that participation in flexibility services must be automated to remove human effort. Furthermore, while user interactions for daily operations should be minimized, system transparency must be increased to build essential end-user trust.

Session Highlights: User Behavior, Trust, and Public Spaces

• User Engagement & Acceptance: Discussion highlighted user engagement as a critical factor for the success of new charging technologies. A lack of integrated, engaging dynamics (such as stand-up-style interactions) impacts the building of trust and confidence among users at public charging stations.
• Public Space Challenges: Managing and estimating demand in public spaces remains heavily complex. It is crucial to closely monitor actual user behavior in these environments to properly calibrate services.
• Interoperability and Standards: Participants noted severe interoperability issues and compliance challenges with the E-Mobility standards. Currently, there are no regular frameworks, making it necessary to look beyond standard tools.
• Certification: The creation of official guidelines with certified stamps (“certifying the standards”) was suggested through a certificate of rules application, as the current lack of certification is seen as a primary bottleneck.
  

Session III: Shaping the Future of V2X through Cluster Collaboration

The event concluded with a forward-looking collaborative roundtable involving the V2X Cluster, featuring project representatives Gonçalo Mendes (Drive 2X I LUT School of Energy Systems), Máté Csukas representing Edwin Bestebreurtje (SCALE I FIER), Gabriele Pesce (AHEAD I E-Mobility Europe), and Yancho Todorov (ePowerMove I VTT). The high-level discussion explored the next generation of energy grid innovations and the collective challenges ahead.

This collaborative spirit reinforced the idea that the end of the EV4EU project is merely the beginning of a new era for the European energy system. By turning electric vehicles into a flexible, resilient backbone for the power grid, the legacy of EV4EU will continue to drive the continent’s green transition for years to come.

Panel Highlights: Business Models, Funding, and the Future of V2G

The introduction of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology into the market was extensively debated:

• Investment and Incentives: Panelists noted that market push will solve part of the structural issues and that extra funding brings crucial added value to these initiatives. If incentives are well-structured through pilot projects, the direct benefits for end-users will become undeniable.
• Business Model (BM) Research: The market is maturing; research that was once a fundamental necessity is now giving way to higher commercial expectations starting from 2027. However, a warning was issued regarding the need for more research focused specifically on viable Business Models, as failing to secure them could harm the ecosystem.

Core Challenges for the Future of V2X

The roundtable discussion highlighted some main challenges for the future of the sector:

1. Clear Regulation: There is a lack of harmonised regulation for the sector. In Portugal, for instance, there is no robust legislation even for basic smart charging, let alone bidirectional charging in public spaces. Standard charging prices (currently paid per minute) is urgent to give the market predictability.
2. Infrastructure Investment: There is a mandatory need to invest in street charging infrastructure, public spaces, and transport networks. Solutions must be thought out in an integrated manner for smart cities.
3. Business Models and Partnerships: It is necessary to define which business models can make the installation of charging stations viable, actively involving automotive manufacturers (OEMs).
4. End-User Transparency: The user must be placed at the center of decisions. It is necessary to clarify what can be expected regarding user behavior and ensure full transparency regarding tariffs and data. There is also a strong focus on security for used cars, including battery passports/data for auditing.
5. Battery Degradation and Management: Concerns over battery wear generate anxiety for clients. It is essential to remove this weight and worry from the end-users’ shoulders.

Policy Recommendations and Technical Solutions

To mitigate battery degradation issues and optimize the system, proposals focused on algorithms and governance were presented:

• Optimized Charging Algorithms: The use of smart charging algorithms aware of battery aging (aging-aware/degradation optimization) allows for the intelligent management of charge and discharge cycles, improving the lifespan of the energy cells.
• Municipal Concessions: Agreements and partnerships with municipal councils were identified as the key element for the practical viability of these policies and the deployment of urban infrastructure.

The meeting was a great platform to talk and plan for future research and teamwork. With 16 partners working together, these results were only possible thanks to everyone’s hard work and dedication.

“From the demonstration sites in 🇵🇹 🇬🇷 🇩🇰 🇸🇮 to the regulatory frameworks it helped shape, EV4EU has shown that V2X is not a future concept- it is here, it is tested, and it is ready to scale. It was a true pleasure to work with such an incredible consortium. To every partner, researcher, pilot site operator, and stakeholder who made this possible: thank you. This was never just a project. It was a collective effort to advance Europe’s energy and mobility transition, one bidirectional charger at a time.”, Hugo Morais.