12:32 pm, September 24, 2021
Tesco could be the best place to shop for electric vehicle owners, as research has found almost half of its larger stores have on-site charging.
A study by EV experts Electrifying.com found Tesco stores are the most likely to have a charge point, with 45 per cent having at least one in the car park.
However, there is a big disparity between brands, with Sainsbury’s propping up the list with just 7.2 per cent of stores having a charge point.
The list, which excluded smaller ‘express’ and ‘local’ stores, saw Morrisons come close behind Tesco in second place, with 40 per cent having a charger.
There was then a big drop to third place, with Asda having 19.7 per cent, followed by Lidl with 15 per cent and Aldi with 10 per cent.
Ginny Buckley, founder of Electrifying.com, said: ‘Congratulations to Tesco and Morrisons which have both invested heavily to provide customers with good charging facilities. We’d love every supermarket site to offer this, but we aren’t there yet.
‘We expected more supermarkets to be doing better, but it’s still great to see how some of them have recognised that offering shoppers reliable car charging is not only good for business but will also help give the nation confidence to make the switch.’
Chargers at supermarkets could encourage EV uptake, with a recent poll on behalf of Electrifying.com, the Department for Transport and the AA finding that 72 per cent of drivers would be more likely to consider an EV if there was more opportunity to charge while they shopped.
Tesco has partnered with Pod Point and Volkswagen to offer free 7kW charging at its stores, as well as low-cost rapid charging.
Louise Goodland, head of retail partnerships at Tesco, said: ‘We want to make it easy for people to switch to electric vehicles and are delighted to be recognised as the best supermarket for EV drivers in the UK.
‘So far we’ve delivered over 23 million miles worth of free, green charges and we’re continuing to roll out EV chargers to 600 Tesco stores across the UK.’
