While Europe is lagging behind the EU Commission’s target for e-car charging infrastructure, retail chains such as Lidl and Kaufland are driving the mobility transition forward. Lidl alone operates more charging points than Luxembourg or Ireland. Together with Kaufland, both part of the Schwarz Gruppe, they run over 11,200 charging points, making the group one of Europe’s largest charging networks.
Source: European Commission TEN-T
Full analysis: Motointegrator Study
Tools: Illustrator, Figma

Posted by DataPulse-Research

27 comments

  1. We’ve seen how competitive supermarkets can be over gasoline pricing, when EV adoption reaches a tipping point supermarkets will be using charge while you shop as a loss leader to get people in the door and practically every parking spot will have a charger.

  2. There is less than 5000 charging spots in entirety of Ireland?! Wow for all wrong reasons

  3. And supermarkets offer the perfect use case. Preferably with those mid-range 50kW-DC-chargers. Usually, leisurely weekly grocery shopping takes about an hour and in that time one can charge a an average EV easily from 20-80%. Highpowered fast chargers are to fast and expensive and 22kW a bit to slow.

  5. What’s really amazing is that Luxembourg (population 680,000) has more charging stations than all of Ireland (population 5 million).

  6. Does this include all countries? If so Luxembourg are doing remarkably well to be ahead despite their population

  7. I don’t know whether to be impressed by Luxembourg or disappointed by Ireland.

  8. Not sure the relevance of your headline, OP. Lidl operates many of the charges in those countries, because Lidl operates in many European countries.

    This is like saying McDonald’s sells more hamburgers than some entire countries. Well, ok, but it also sells a high percentage of the hamburgers in the countries it apparently outsells, and the countries it outsells cannot operate in outside markets like McDonald’s (by definition).

    The data you present are meaningless. The Motointegrator study that you link is actually thoughtful and presents the data accurately — you should have just used what was there, instead of combining two unlike things.

  10. The whole reason most people I know won’t get a EV is because of the lack of charging points, so this makes it obvious to me that countries aren’t doing as much as they could be.

  11. You could say EV charging is spreading Lidl by Lidl?

  12. That would be nice if I could actually use them! I have set up Lidl app in my country and its not that easy like Tesla using it everywhere you go, but you have to set it up for country you are visiting, absolutely pain in the ass.. Last time I tried that, was unable to start most thanks to language was not in English.

  13. EV chargers (near a store) are basically printing money and require very little maintenance. Meanwhile fuel distribution is endless pain on many levels with minimal profit.

    Source: Chain with 2000+ chargers and hundreds of gas stations.

  14. By the way: Lidl and Kaufland are both from the Schwarz group

  15. To be fare, all Lidl’s combined is probably bigger than Luxembourg 

  18. OK, I suspect that the square footage of all Lidls in Europe exceeds the square footage of Luxembourg. If you include parking lots.

  19. Shoutout to Luxembourg having more chargers than Ireland 🤣

  20. except they are offline. I have 1 kaufland and 3 lidl near me and their charging stations have been offline since they were installed >6 months ago

  21. Shame their app for EV charging is so terrible. Instead of topping up your account against which a charge is taken when you charge your car, Lidl instead holds £40 in reserve every time you plug in your car. So in one instance where the charger was finicky and I had to make 4 attempts until the charger knew it’s plugged in properly, in the space of those 10 seconds Lidl put on hold £120, to which they took off £2 for charging my car and gave me back my £120 after 24 hours.

    They need to fix the app asap.

  22. Large super markets already have large power line connections. So it’s kinda natural they put up charging stations.

  24. Aren’t Lidl and Aldi the same company? If so, shouldn’t they be listed together?

  25. Fun fact, I live in Luxembourg and I only heard of 1 Lidl with charging. Some 20km away.
    My favourite 2 Lidls don’t have EV charging .

    Guess that explains the bad number for Lux. Either this or the fact that it’s a small country

  26. Fun thing with shopping is you don’t generally just browse the store for an hour and end up buying nothing. They know how much profit each minute a customer spends in the store makes them and it has got to be a lot more than some cents worth of electricity the charger can charge vehicles with so even if they give free charging it is going to make them money from attracting a high-profit-per-minute customer.

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