E.Leclerc drops the price of alternating-current charging at its French stores to €0.17/kWh on Monday 5 October 2026. That undercuts Lidl by a single cent, and it makes Leclerc the cheapest public charging rate in France for the second time this year.
The cent is the headline. The conditions are the story.
What actually changes
| Rate | Where | |
|---|---|---|
| E.Leclerc, from 5 October | €0.17/kWh | 22 kW AC points at 330 stores |
| E.Leclerc, summer 2026 | €0.19/kWh | — |
| Lidl France, from 18 September | €0.18/kWh | 22 kW AC, Lidl Plus app, 1,000+ stores |
| Ionity France | €0.59/kWh | Motorway DC |
Billing runs through the Charge E-Lec app and needs no subscription. First-time users get half the value of their first charge back as E.Leclerc vouchers. Leclerc's own illustration is that the rate buys 100 km for under €3.
Two limits sit behind the number. The rate applies to 22 kW AC posts only — rapid and ultra-rapid charging is excluded — and to 330 stores, against a Charge E-Lec network of more than 3,000 charge points. Leclerc has committed more than €200 million to reach 10,000 points by 2030, but today the cheap tariff covers a minority of what it already operates.
A Tesla cannot use half the post
This is the part that decides what the tariff is worth to you, and it has nothing to do with Leclerc.
A 22 kW AC post delivers 22 kW only to a car that can accept it. European Model 3 and Model Y ship with an 11 kW onboard charger, so 11 kW is the ceiling. Older Model S and Model X with the 16.5 kW charger do better. The remaining capacity is unreachable no matter what the post is rated at.
At 11 kW, an hour's shopping adds about 11 kWh — roughly €1.87 at the new rate, against about €6.50 for the same energy at a French Ionity post. Adding 50 kWh would take four and a half hours.
So this is incidental charging priced well, not a way to fill a car.
"Cheaper than at home" does not survive the fine print
Several French outlets have run the comparison, and it is weaker than it looks. What a French household pays per kWh depends on its contract and on the time of day. A driver on an off-peak tariff charging overnight may still pay less than €0.17, which is the scenario most owners with a home point are actually in.
Where the rate does win is for drivers without home charging — flat dwellers, street parkers — for whom the alternative is not an overnight tariff but a public post at two or three times the price. That group is the one this tariff genuinely moves.
The European supermarket price war is the real signal
Three cuts in a month, all from grocers: Lidl in Britain, Lidl in France, now Leclerc. Each has the same shape — a sharp AC rate, gated behind the retailer's own app, aimed at the hour a customer is already parked.
Leclerc's variant drops the app-membership gate that Lidl kept, which is the more aggressive move of the two. Neither is competing with a Supercharger. Both are competing for the shop.
For a European owner the practical takeaway is narrow but real: the cheapest public electricity in France is now in a supermarket car park, it is slow, and it is worth exactly as much as the time you were going to spend there anyway.