Eldrive receives EIB grant for charging network in Eastern Europe

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is supporting the construction of a total of 10,574 new charging stations for electric vehicles in Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and Latvia by charging infrastructure operator Eldrive with around 40 million euros.

The total cost of the project is estimated at around 174 million euros. The EIB does not provide any information on the implementation period. According to its website, Eldrive operates more than 700 charging points in Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania. The company is based in Bulgaria but operates offices in all three countries. Eldrive was already mentioned as a player at the end of 2021 in the context of an announcement by OMV Petrom to expand its charging network in Southeast Europe.

The EIB justifies its financial support by saying that the aim is to accelerate the electrification of road transport in Europe. “The project also supports a wide range of EU policies and contributes to achieve EU decarbonisation objectives. Specifically, it contributes to the EU Green Deal objective to reach one million public EV chargers and alternative fuel refuelling stations in the EU by 2025. It also supports the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy target of one million EV public recharging points in the EU by 2025 and 3 million by 2030,” it says in the accompanying release

Eldrive is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bulgarian company eMobility International. It was founded in 2014. The company point out that the money is made available through debt financing and that “the final signing and receiving of this financing is object of additional negotiations, terms and commitment from both sides”.

eib.org, eldrive.eu, Infos per mail