What are the main drivers of EV flexibility value?

The value of EV flexibility is driven primarily by wholesale electricity price volatility. Wider overnight price spreads create more opportunity to optimise charging. Other important drivers include renewable generation, battery storage deployment, market regulation, network congestion and the availability of additional revenue streams such as ancillary services and local flexibility markets.

What are the additional revenue streams for EV flexibility?

In addition to wholesale market optimisation, EV flexibility can create value through intraday trading, imbalance optimisation, ancillary services, local flexibility markets, capacity markets and network tariff optimisation. The most attractive business models combine multiple value streams while balancing operational complexity and risk.

What is the EV Flexibility Index?

The EV Flexibility Index is a benchmarking tool from LCP Delta that tracks the monthly value that an average Electric Vehicle (EVs) can generate from smart charging across European energy markets. It helps retailers, investors and flexibility providers compare opportunities by country and understand how value is changing over time.

EV Flexibility Index Q1 2026: How much value could an average EV have captured?

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Laurence Robinson Senior Consultant - Power Markets

Lucinda Murley Senior Consultant

Stephen Harkin Partner and Head of Demand

In the first four months of the year, energy suppliers could have saved €30-50 per EV.

Value of flexibility for energy suppliers optimising energy procurement in wholesale markets by month per average EV

Extrapolating annually, suppliers could be saving €120-170 per year, per EV from wholesale market optimisation alone across Germany, Belgium, Great Britain, France and the Netherlands. However, the value of flexibility varies significantly by month and while countries trends are similar, there are key differences.

This quarterly analysis summarises the latest findings from the first four months of 2026 and explores what they mean for businesses developing EV flexibility strategies. Going forward, we will be providing a quarterly update (with the next edition in July 2026).

What drives monthly variability?

Our analysis shows that value of flexibility per month varied significantly across the first four months of this year, ranging from ~€7 to ~€21 across the five countries covered. This variability has significant implications to developing flexibility business models:

How predictable is this variance?
Will this monthly variance translate to annual variance (eg. varied annual value?)
How can this variability be managed, minimised or exploited?

Ultimately this variance is driven the volatility in wholesale markets through the night when EV’s charge. We can see the weekly evolution of 1-hour spreads below, which are a good indicator of market volatility, although they don’t tell the full story.

Many will have heard about the recent prices shocks in the European energy markets causing record breaking negative pricing in the daytime due to high solar outputs and relatively low demand. In addition to low daytime prices, this also caused higher evening peak prices, leading to higher spreads that EV optimisation can exploit. Evening peak price were further by increased by rising gas prices. This illustrates that EV flexibility value is intricately linked to complex wholesale market dynamics.

Why is value in GB lower?

The monthly values that were available in GB were 20-30% lower than most continental European countries. While the GB market has some of the highest wholesale prices in Europe, volatility overnight is lower than we see in other countries, leading to lower value for optimising energy procurement. However, in GB there is a “virtual trading party” route to sell power directly into the wholesale market, which can take advantage of those high wholesale prices – increasing the value that can be captured. We will be exploring this more in future posts.

Why did value in France remain stable in February?

As European markets are connected and traded commonly, we can see the same trends across markets. However, the flexibility value and overnight volatility in France remained consistent in February, while falling in other European markets.

In January, wholesale electricity markets in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium all followed similar patterns. But in February, the French market began to stand out. France’s renewable energy output increased, however its nuclear plants, limited in flexibility, could not turn down to compensate leading to an energy surplus. Interconnectors running at nearly full capacity enabled France to export power to Belgium, Italy, GB, and Germany, but the excess still surpassed what could be exported. As a result, French electricity prices fell due to the oversupply. This included overnight prices, which meant price spreads overnight remained stable.

Why this matters for retailers, aggregators and investors

Understanding the dynamics EV flexibility value is becoming increasingly important for:

Energy retailers designing smart charging tariffs
Charge point operators, electromobility service providers and OEMs who are evaluating their role in the monetisation of flexibility
Flexibility service providers evaluating market opportunities
Investors assessing EV charging and aggregation business models

The EV Flexibility Index provides an objective benchmark to help organisations quantify potential returns and identify the markets with the strongest opportunities.

Explore the EV Flexibility Index

If you would like to understand how EV flexibility values are changing across Europe and what this means for your business, the EV Flexibility Index provides the market intelligence needed to support strategic decisions.

From benchmarking opportunities to assessing future scenarios and evaluating the full EV flexibility value stack, the EV Flexibility Index helps organisations navigate a rapidly changing market.

See the EV Flexibility Index in action

Your questions answered

: The value of EV flexibility is driven primarily by wholesale electricity price volatility. Wider overnight price spreads create more opportunity to optimise charging. Other important drivers include renewable generation, battery storage deployment, market regulation, network congestion and the availability of additional revenue streams such as ancillary services and local flexibility markets.

: In addition to wholesale market optimisation, EV flexibility can create value through intraday trading, imbalance optimisation, ancillary services, local flexibility markets, capacity markets and network tariff optimisation. The most attractive business models combine multiple value streams while balancing operational complexity and risk.

: The EV Flexibility Index is a benchmarking tool from LCP Delta that tracks the monthly value that an average Electric Vehicle (EVs) can generate from smart charging across European energy markets. It helps retailers, investors and flexibility providers compare opportunities by country and understand how value is changing over time.