Lidl starts a Level 4 truck pilot in Germany

Lidl and Einride began public-road service in Germany with a cab-less SAE Level 4 electric truck that carries 15 Euro pallets and can run up to three times daily, Lidl’s announcement says. The four-month Edermünde pilot could move more than 3,000 pallets under a German KBA permit, but it covers one fixed route from a distribution center to a nearby store—not general autonomous trucking. Logistics operators should measure route completion, intervention, labor substitution, and service reliability before scaling, using Pony.ai’s European autonomous-fleet trial as a comparison for route-bound autonomy.