With this expansion at stores in Ontario and Quebec, Ikea Canada now offers free EV charging at all 14 of its retail locations

Ikea Canada is expanding its electric vehicle charging network footprint by adding 25 stations in Ontario and Quebec.

In an announcement today in the parking lot at Ikea’s store in Ottawa, the Swedish furniture retailer said it used $300,000 secured from Natural Resources Canada’s Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program (ZEVIP) and $305,000 of its own money to install 25 charging stations at its stores in Montreal, Boucherville, Quebec City, and Ottawa as well as its distribution centre in Beauharnois, Que.

“At Ikea Canada, we have a simple yet powerful vision to create a better everyday life for the many people. As Canada’s largest home furnishing retailer, we believe it’s our responsibility to have a positive impact on people and the planet, and that we are big enough to make a difference,” says Helene Loberg, country sustainability manager, Ikea Canada, in a press release.

Ikea now provides free EV charging stations at all of its 14 retail locations in Canada.

Chargers for customers and commercial fleet

Ikea’s chargers — a combination of Level 2 and Level 3 chargers — are now open for both customer, co-worker and commercial use. The chargers are supplied by ChargePoint.

The multi-use functions of the chargers is particularly important to Ikea as it grows its electric delivery fleet, which largely consists of medium-duty trucks.

Ikea partners with Metro Supply Chain Logistics in B.C. and GoBolt in Ontario to provide zero-emission last mile delivery. Now that the Ikea Ottawa store has two commercial EV chargers, GoBolt will be able to use two electric trucks to do Ikea home deliveries in the city.

At the announcement event, Ikea also unveiled the new Lion Electric delivery trucks it purchased from the Quebec-based manufacturer as part of its fleet decarbonization strategy.

“The output for L3 [DC fast] chargers is 125 kWh, which means that the Lion Electric truck that our delivery partner, GoBolt, uses takes between 30-45 minutes to charge,” an Ikea spokesperson said to Electric Autonomy in an email.

Ikea’s goal is to make 100 per cent of its home deliveries zero-emission by 2025. As well, the company states in its 2022 sustainability report that, “We aim for all company owned, leased and shared vehicles used in our operations to be zero emission by 2025. This includes company cars, pool cars (for business travel) and forklift trucks/shunting trucks.”