Electric car sharing that also powers the grid
In Utrecht, Netherlands, electric car sharing that also powers the grid went live in April 2025, when 50 Renault 5 E Tech cars entered the MyWheels shared fleet fitted with vehicle to grid technology, equipment that lets a car battery send power back into the electric grid rather than only draw power out of it. The charging company We Drive Solar installs and runs the bidirectional charging stations that make this possible, chargers built to push electricity in both directions, into the car and back out to the local power lines. Renault Group had committed to supplying up to 500 of these cars to the shared fleet, and projected that the completed fleet could supply about 10% of the flexible power the Utrecht region needs to balance solar and wind generated electricity at peak times, the hours each day when demand for electricity is highest.
We are directly helping to reduce grid congestion in Utrecht with our technology.
Robin Berg, director of We Drive Solar. Source 2.
Source 2 states this as a 50 times gap between the regional shortfall and the relief a completed 500 vehicle fleet would provide.
Show the numbers
| Regional peak shortfall | 250 |
| Relief from the completed 500 vehicle fleet | 5 |
What the grid operator actually measured
The clearest evidence that the plan works comes from Stedin, the regional grid operator responsible for keeping local power lines running, not from We Drive Solar or Renault Group themselves. Stedin measured the first 5 months of vehicle to grid charging in Utrecht and reported up to 300 kilowatts of evening peak congestion reduced, congestion meaning too many demands placed on the same power lines at once, and more than 65,000 kilowatt hours of electricity returned to the grid in total, enough to cover the evening peak electricity demand of about 1,000 households. That result came from just the first 50 cars, before the fleet grew any further.
The fleet keeps growing, but not the same count each time
The partnership announced 120 more vehicles planned for the Utrecht shared fleet over winter 2025 to 2026. Adding that planned addition to the 50 cars already live comes to up to 170 cars in the Utrecht shared fleet, a MAOWCE calculation from 2 separate announcements, not a total either source states directly, and no source confirms the 120 vehicle addition was actually delivered. The same partnership also brought the technology to a second Dutch city, Eindhoven, with 28 shared cars able to return power to the grid in 2025, planned to grow to 100 cars in 2026. By June 2026, We Drive Solar and Stedin jointly stated that nearly 500 bidirectional vehicles are active across the Utrecht region, most of them from the MyWheels shared fleet and a growing number owned by private individuals rather than the shared fleet alone.
These are 3 separate fleet counts, not 1 fleet growing over time. The Utrecht planned addition of 120 vehicles was announced for winter 2025 to 2026, and no source confirms it was delivered.
Show the numbers
| Eindhoven year 1, 2025 | 28 |
| Eindhoven year 2 planned | 100 |
| Utrecht planned addition | 120 |
A tax still blocks the bigger scale up
In June 2026, Stedin signed a formal Capacity Control Contract with We Drive Solar, LomboXnet and The Sharing Group, a contract that lets Stedin use these vehicles formally against grid congestion, presented the same day to 2 Dutch national state secretaries. Both Stedin and We Drive Solar name a Dutch double tax on stored and returned electricity as the main obstacle still blocking bigger scale up, since it taxes the same electricity twice, once when it goes into a car battery and again when it comes back out to the grid. Stedin expects strong growth in flexible grid capacity from 2027 onward, as more carmakers including Hyundai, Kia, Volkswagen, Polestar and BMW add vehicle to grid capable models.