Hello Alpitronic, bye ABB
Analysts at SimplyWall.st posted yesterday that insiders at ABB sold off $8.3 million of stock this year, signalling a lack of confidence in the business. I have been following the company because it has historically been the go-to provider of public DC fast chargers for electric vehicles. Charging networks like BP Pulse, Shell Recharge, and Gridserve have all been installing ABB chargers for the last decade—that is, until they all switched to installing Alpitronic chargers in the last couple of years. Fastned, for one, has now started selling off its ABB chargers altogether, no longer considering them for its network.
That makes it so that currently Fastned, InstaVolt, IONITY, Allego, Enel, E.ON, TotalEnergies, EnBW, Mer, Mercedes, Audi, and Porsche—as well as BP and Shell—are all deploying Alpitronic DC chargers, in many cases replacing ABB units.
To compare the price and capabilities of both the ABB and Alpitronic chargers here are the main ones:
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€17,974 Alpitronic HYC50 DC 50 kW wallbox; parallel charging possible at 2 x 25 kW, V2G ready
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€63,999 Alpitronic Hypercharger HYC 300
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€54,000 ABB HPC Power Cabinet 175kW
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€50,999 ABB Terra 124kw
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€89,000 ABB Terra 360kw Hypercharger
But this alone does not explain why everyone switched—literally overnight—to what was once a relatively unknown and small Italian aircraft power supply specialist, to the detriment of an established industrial giant like ABB.
Trying to dig further and establish potential reasons for this turnaround the relevant articles like this one from Alpitronic partner Infineon do not provide a lot of clues other than lot of tech that surely ABB has access to as well, eg:
This is made possible by using EasyPACK™ CoolSiC TM MOSFET 1B and 2B modules from Infineon Technologies AG in combination with the EiceDRIVER™ X3.
Other sources of information like https://www.alpitronic.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/alpitronic_PCTB-D_Technical_Information.pdf and the founders page are consistent with relatively small operation that has experienced truly explosive growth.
The only other snippet of information I can ascertain from there is that Alpitronic does not have extensive in-house labs for all the analysis it is doing.
Failure analysis can be enhanced by additional non-destructive analysis methods like optical inspec- tion at open housing, X-ray or Scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) for which we rely on external partners.
It seems like their rise to prominence is truly miraculous. Whatever got them here, they are winning against a giant like ABB and setting themselves up for long-term success. For example, the recently announced HYC400 is currently the fastest production EV charger, and the following might explain its raison d'être:
In 2021, the German government revealed plans for the "Deutschlandnetz" (Germany network), involving over a thousand fast-charging parks nationwide for which two billion euros are to be made available. Here, the government stipulates that each charging station must have two charging points at which two vehicles can charge at the same time, and that a nominal charging power of 200 kW must be available per charging point.
Currently the only charger to satisfy the above requirement is the Alpitronic Hypercharger HYC 400
Peering at the specs, it is future-proof with Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) 1.6 J and ready for 2.0 J. I might investigate that further, but until then, I wish them luck and hope to visit their new planned headquarters in Tyrol one day. It has the makings of a great eco-building, and if they are as successful with it as they have been with their chargers, it is going to be quite something.