E.ON to build charging stations at Czech Kaufland locations

The energy group E.ON will build EV charging stations, including HPC chargers, at all existing Kaufland stores in the Czech Republic in the coming years. In the first phase, which has already started, E.ON will install more than 400 charging points at 41 Kaufland locations in the country by 2026.

According to a company statement, Kaufland customers in the Czech Republic have access to 99 charging stations at 73 shops. For the most part, these are still older charging points. E.ON has already installed newer columns at three locations, namely a relatively rare variant of the Alpitronic Hypercharger: The E.ON columns in Kolin, Jablonex nad Nisou and Hloubetin use the narrow housing of the Hypercharger HYC150. But they have only one power module for a CCS connection with 75 kW installed, plus the Type 2 port with 22 kW AC.

The announcement does not reveal in detail which charging columns will be installed at each location in the first round (i.e. more than 400 charging points at 41 branches). When the first round of expansion is completed by 2026, the remaining locations will follow in the second phase, and then more than 1,000 charging points will be available at around 140 locations.

“We will gradually build additional infrastructure not only at this location, so that the minimum standard for each market will be four charging points with outputs of up to 300 kW,” says Jörg Bauer, CEO of Kaufland Czech Republic. According to Martin Klíma, CEO of E.ON Drive Infrastructure, they have agreed with Kaufland “to build entire charging hubs, which we see as the standard that will be needed in the transition to electric mobility in the coming years.”

All sites will have “modular technology” to increase the columns’ charging capacity without further civil engineering work if demand increases. “We can already see this trend in Scandinavia, and as a company, we believe it will happen here very soon, so we want to be prepared,” says E.ON manager Klíma. Charging stations over 150 kW will also have a payment terminal to allow non-registered customers to pay by card or mobile phone.

In addition to expanding the public charging infrastructure for customers, E.ON Drive supports Kaufland with internal electromobility. E.ON will install charging stations for the company fleet and provide the “E.ON Drive” system for company cars, i.e. a charging card for activating the company charging points and for access to more than 60,000 charging points in ten European countries.

kaufland.cz (in Czech)