Lidl to accelerate charging infrastructure in Germany

German discounter Lidl intends to equip around 400 of its branches throughout Germany with charging points within the next 12 months and plans to accelerate the installation to include locations close to highways and in rural areas.

Globally operating German supermarket discounter Lidl intends to equip around 400 of its branches throughout Germany with charging points for customers and employees. Once completed, this will be a big step up from the current 30 charging points available. Another 20 additional charging points are currently in the process of being installed.

Lidl now wants to significantly increase the speed of the expansion: According to the discounter, new buildings and modernised branches will be equipped with a charging station with immediate effect.

In the long term, as many locations as possible are to be equipped with at least two charging points. In addition, Lidl will set up additional charging stations at additional branches near the motorway and in rural regions with immediate effect. When expanding the charging infrastructure, the supermarket chain relies on a mix of AC and DC charging points in various power classes up to 50 kW, with powerful DC systems tending to be used near the motorway.

The expansion of the supermarket charging network “significantly reduces the maximum distance between two Lidl charging points,” says Wolf Tiedemann, Head of Central Services at Lidl. In concrete terms, the network will be compressed to such an extent that the maximum distance between two charging stations will be 50 kilometres. “On average, it will even be less than 20 kilometres,” says Tiedemann. Charging stations are also being installed at Lidl stores in Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and the Balearic Islands (off Spain).

Competitors Kaufland and internationally operating German supermarket chain Aldi Süd is also in the process of setting up a charging network at German branches. In addition to its more than 50 locations equipped with fast chargers, the company announced in August that it wanted to equip a further 28 branches with charging points (each with up to 50 kW), all of which are supposed to be reachable from motorways in less than five minutes. Notably, all existing and planned Aldi charging stations are located in the south and west of the central European country. This is because Aldi Süd’s independently operating sister company Aldi Nord is not participating in the electrical offensive. Many other European retail chains, including Rewe, Ikea and a number of Edeka stores, have long since discovered the provision of charging points for their business.

unternehmen.lidl.de (in German)