Tesco has reached 600 stores with electric charging points – saving more than 24,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.
Tesco’s Kirkwall superstore has become the 600th store in the UK to have EV charging points installed.
Since Tesco, Volkswagen and Pod Point launched the network in 2019, the charging points have provided 43,218kWh of energy to date – enough to power more than 4,000 homes for a whole day.
The installation at the store on the remote Scottish island of Orkney, is the culmination of a programme which has seen more than 2,500 EV charging bays installed at 600 Tesco stores across the UK over the last three years – with all electricity used to charge cars generated from renewable sources. The network also includes 129 rapid chargers.
The partnership was announced to improve the charging infrastructure as the UK prepares for an electric future. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, at the end of February 2023 there were 693,307 battery-electric cars in the UK, an increase of 610 per cent on the number of BEVs in 2019.
Tesco has worked with Volkswagen and Pod Point to build the largest retail electric vehicle charging network in the UK, giving EV drivers a place to top up their cars while doing their shopping.
The chargers have been used more than 6,000,000 times already saving more than 24,000 tonnes of CO2.
