Lidl has started using a cab-less autonomous electric truck for regular store deliveries in Germany, assigning it a daily replenishment route between its Edermünde distribution centre and a nearby store.
The truck, supplied by Swedish freight technology company Einride, operates at SAE Level 4 under a permit from Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority, or KBA.
The vehicle operates without a driver or safety operator on board. Einride and Lidl said the KBA permit is the first of its kind in Germany for a cab-less Level 4 truck operating as part of daily logistics.
Autonomous truck enters daily replenishment
The truck has space for 15 Euro pallets and can make up to three trips a day. Lidl said it will cover all dry-goods deliveries on the designated route during the four-month project.
The vehicle can move more than 3,000 pallets over that period. “With this innovative project, we are testing a technological milestone step by step and safely in real-world operations,” Thomas Dangelmayer, head of operational logistics at Lidl Germany, said.
Lidl is using the project to assess how autonomous transport can be incorporated into its existing logistics operations. Its September 15 announcement did not provide figures on cost savings, delivery times, vehicle utilisation, or productivity gains, and the retailer has not announced a wider rollout as part of the current deployment.
Lidl and Einride have also linked the project to driver shortages and the continuity of goods movements. The International Road Transport Union estimated in June 2026 that about 502,000 truck-driver positions were unfilled across Europe in 2025, representing 13% of positions in the markets covered by its survey.
IRU expects around 20% of Europe’s current driver workforce to retire within five years. Around two-thirds of European operators surveyed also said they had turned down new contracts because they could not find enough drivers.
How Germany enables Level 4 freight operations
SAE International classifies Level 4 as high driving automation. At this level, the automated driving system can perform the driving task without requiring a person to take control when it operates within the conditions for which the system was designed.
Level 4 remains limited to specified operating conditions, unlike Level 5, which SAE defines as full driving automation across all conditions. Germany permits driverless Level 4 vehicles to operate on public roads within approved operating areas.
Germany’s Autonomous Driving Act entered into force in July 2021 and established a legal framework for Level 4 vehicles to operate on public roads beyond trials. The Federal Ministry of Transport said the vehicles must remain within geographically defined operating areas.
The KBA is responsible for approving vehicles with autonomous driving functions, while the relevant state authority, or Autobahn GmbH for federal trunk roads, approves the operating area.
Germany’s rules retain human technical supervision even when no driver is physically inside the vehicle. A technical supervisor can deactivate the vehicle or approve certain manoeuvres when the automated system requires intervention, but the law does not require the vehicle to be permanently monitored while driving autonomously.
The vehicle must also be able to enter a minimal-risk state if it reaches its system limits or cannot continue operating as intended. German law defines this as bringing the vehicle to a stop at the safest available location and activating its hazard warning lights.
Einride says its autonomous driving stack combines machine-learning-based navigation with an independent deterministic safety checker. The system uses a redundant sensor suite consisting of lidar, radar, and cameras, with testing carried out through simulation, hardware- and vehicle-in-the-loop testing, proving grounds, and site validation before deployment.
Parts of Einride’s autonomous technology have undergone external review. Swedish research institute RISE said it reviewed the functional safety of the company’s control system, including obstacle detection and cybersecurity, as part of Einride’s application for autonomous-vehicle trials on Swedish public roads in 2025.
That review concerned Einride’s broader autonomous system rather than Lidl’s German deployment. Einride also said in May 2026 that TÜV SÜD had begun an independent assessment of the governance processes behind its autonomous Safety Management System.
From one delivery route to a multi-stop model
The current Lidl operation connects the Edermünde distribution centre with one nearby store. After successful validation of the route, Lidl plans to expand the approach through a multi-stop “milkrun” model at another location.
A milkrun combines several collection or delivery points into one scheduled route. In Lidl’s case, the planned phase would move the autonomous operation beyond the current single distribution-centre-to-store connection.
Lidl operates more than 3,250 stores and 39 administrative and distribution centres in Germany. The company has not said that autonomous vehicles will be deployed across that wider network.
Einride has previously moved autonomous trucking from a public-road pilot into recurring logistics operations with GE Appliances in Tennessee. The companies conducted a two-week public-road pilot in 2022 before putting an autonomous vehicle into full-time daily operations in November 2023.
The GE Appliances operation was scheduled to make up to seven trips a day carrying finished goods between a factory and warehouse. AI-enabled cameras were used to operate dock equipment, while an autonomous mobile robot loaded and unloaded the truck, reducing loading times by 80%, according to GE Appliances.
GE Appliances said the deployment was designed to link several automation systems within the same logistics flow. “We are moving from implementing one-off solutions addressing various challenges to creating interoperability among systems,” Harry Chase, senior director of central materials at GE Appliances, said.
A remote Einride operator remained on site to monitor the GE Appliances vehicle. Lidl’s German deployment differs in its use of the country’s Level 4 framework for driverless public-road operations within a defined operating area.
Lidl and Einride said further autonomous deployments with other Schwarz Group companies are under discussion. The companies have not announced a timetable or vehicle count for those deployments.
(Photo by Josh Sorenson)
See also: JD.com expands physical AI in logistics with 3 million robots
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