Orlen Seeks to Quick Charge Europe’s Fastest-Growing EV Market
(Bloomberg) -- Orlen SA, known across eastern Europe for its vast network of red-and-white petrol stations, is accelerating expansion into charging points for electric vehicles as its home market in Poland becomes the continent’s latest hot spot for EVs.
The region’s biggest oil refiner just opened its first EV hub in Poland with eight hyper-fast Kempower Oyj’s charging points. Orlen will add more than 10 such installations this year and another 50 over the next two years, Krzysztof Kaczynski, the firm’s electromobility executive director, told Bloomberg News.
EV sales in Poland have more than doubled during the first nine months of 2025 — that’s the fastest growth rate in the European Union even as EVs account for just 9% of all new car purchases in the east European nation, compared with 16% in the bloc. Until a few weeks ago, Orlen only operated relatively slower charging stations in Poland.
“The number of electric cars will grow rapidly in Poland,” Kaczynski said in an interview. “Today, there are about 120,000 such vehicles but next year there could be twice as many and by 2030 this number could be close to one million.”
Orlen plans to triple its Polish network to about 3,700 charging points in 2030 and reach 6,000 points five years later. On top of that, the firm wants to install another 4,000 points in its other markets, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany.
Poland’s government expects the total number of charging points to grow to 87,000 in 2030. Orlen is fourth in Poland behind GreenWay Polska, Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG and PowerDot Poland Sp zoo with an 8% share of the EV chargers’ market, according to a report by F5A New Mobility Research and Consulting.
Filling Station Base
Orlen, a $33-billion company that runs some 3,500 petrol filling stations across seven countries, is ahead of its international rivals in preparing for the EV evolution in Poland. Operators including BP Plc and Shell Plc don’t have large-scale EV charging networks in the country.
Orlen plans to capitalize on its network of filling stations to fend off rivals and keep costs low. Kaczynski said that strategic locations may also lead to higher utilization rates, while some of its competitors simply “grab up land” and build EV chargers without much consideration for infrastructure or charging speeds.
“We don’t build the network just for statistics,” he said. “We are interested in how much electricity we can sell, and therefore whether a point is actually useful for travelers.”
Kaczynski said that chargers will need to be used about 9% of the time, or a little more than two hours a day, to make the unit profitable.
“No charging network in Poland has broken even yet,” he said. “Orlen’s electromobility business is on the right track to reach positive Ebitda within two years.”
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