Despite the U.S. government’s rapid-fire retreat from clean energy programs, America’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure is steadily improving, with an increasing number of stations, greater reliability and faster speeds.
While the Tesla Supercharger network remains the gold standard of charging in the U.S., rival networks like Electrify America and ChargePoint are also improving. Now, Italian electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) maker Alpitronic is helping raise the bar even higher.
Before diving deep, let’s get the jargon out of the way: Alpitronic makes the physical chargers themselves. It supplies this equipment to large networks like Electrify America, which then operate and maintain the stations. Some players, like Tesla and ChargePoint, take a more vertical approach by building and running their own equipment.
Alpitronic is focused on what it does best: building the stalls. It is already the backbone of Europe's charging ecosystem, powering some of the continent’s largest charging networks, including Ionity and Fastned.
Now, it has quietly become America’s second-largest charging hardware supplier behind Tesla, according to data from charging analytics firm Paren that was provided to InsideEVs.
Alpitronic dispensers are projected to account for 12% of U.S. public fast-charging stations deployed in 2025, second only to Tesla (36%) and ahead of ChargePoint (9%) and BTC Power (8%). Again, these numbers are for the hardware suppliers themselves, not the larger networks.
Its market share was zero last year, so that’s an impressive achievement.
Gallery: Alpitronic Chargers
Over the past 12 months, Alpitronic has inked deals with a growing roster of American partners in quick succession. That includes Ionna, Walmart, Mercedes-Benz High Power Charging, Electrify America, BP Pulse and Greenlane, which is developing a charging network for commercial truck fleets.
So, why are so many charging networks racing to deploy Alpitronic hardware? What makes these stalls stand out from a Tesla Supercharger or a ChargePoint station? And how did this company grow so fast in such a short time?
How Alpitronic Quickly Grew In The U.S.
“When they got into the fast charging hardware business, they started working with many European companies,” Loren McDonald, the chief analyst at Paren, told InsideEVs.
Its proven track record in Europe, along with cutting-edge tech and reliability, has now turned the company into America’s de facto charger supplier other than Tesla. It opened its U.S. headquarters in Charlotte in 2023 and also has a local production facility in Wisconsin.
Alpitronic’s European customers urged it to enter the U.S. “They literally came to the U.S. with orders in hand,” he added.
If you’ve driven an EV in Europe, or the Southern U.S. in places such as Charlotte or the Texas triangle, you’ve probably used one of the Alpitronic stalls.
Their sleek rectangular dispensers feature dual cables suspended from the top and a large screen on the side. They support both the Tesla-style North American Charging System (NACS) plug and the Combined Charging System (CCS) plug while delivering up to 400 kilowatts of power. That far exceeds what most EVs in the U.S. can even accept today, though newer models such as the Lucid Gravity are capable of charging at 400 kW.
The screens display key charging statistics such as speed and cost. They even show the charging curve that EV nerds love to monitor. Following in the footsteps of some Chinese automakers and charge-point operators, it even has plans to deploy megawatt chargers in Europe in the second half of this year.
Now, Alpitronic is supercharging America’s charger deployment and reliability with the kind of momentum Tesla once carried alone.
“The U.S. is one of our most strategic markets globally, and we’re investing accordingly in local support, production capacity and service infrastructure to match that demand,” Mike Doucleff, the President of Alpitronic Americas, told InsideEVs.
In September 2023, Alpitronic opened its U.S. headquarters in Charlotte and installed a bunch of 400 kW stations at the site, drawing eyeballs from the EV charging community, as YouTube channel Out Of Spec Bits first reported.
But Ionna catapulted the company into the spotlight. Ionna is the newly-formed EV charging consortium supported by eight major automakers in the U.S., including General Motors, Stellantis, Toyota and Hyundai. The consortium is building a premium gas station-like experience for EVs. Ionna’s “Rechargeries” features amenities like cafes, Wi-Fi, and workspaces. They exclusively use Alpitronic HYC 400 chargers.
Ionna is expanding at warp speed, too. It was formed in February 2024. After launching its first “rechargery” early this year in Apex, North Carolina, it already has 200+ stalls operational as of July, with 400 more under construction.
Alpitronic is now helping all these networks stitch together a more reliable and fast charging service—just as it did in Europe, where reliable and widespread public charging has helped accelerate EV adoption.
What Makes Its Chargers Unique?
EV charging isn’t as frictionless as refueling your gas car, but it’s getting there.
For years, EV drivers ran into frustrating issues such as broken stations, damaged cables, payment failures and buggy software. Extreme heat or frigid winters made matters worse. I’ve run into broken Electrify America and EVGo stations at least half a dozen times within the past 12 months, although both those networks have significantly improved more recently. And charging keeps improving rapidly overall.
Tesla Superchargers avoid most of these issues thanks to the company’s vertical integration and quick fixes—Tesla designs, manufactures and operates its own chargers. It has its own proprietary software running through them.
Even though Alpitronic is only a supplier and isn’t vertically integrated in the same way as Tesla, it’s leaning on technology and software to avoid downtime for its chargers. Fixing problems quickly or before they even occur is a focus for the company.
Just like the modern software-defined vehicle, Alpitronic’s chargers are software-defined, too.
“Every charger is connected to our backend (in addition to the operator's backend), enabling remote diagnostics, real-time monitoring, and over-the-air updates,” Doucleff said. “Many issues can even be resolved remotely without rolling a truck,” he added.
Remote diagnostics pinpoint the faulty part, allowing technicians to get to the location with the right replacement. That means fixes are usually quick, and defective components are returned for “root cause analysis, not patched on site.”
Additionally, charging losses occur during high-voltage electricity transmission, starting from the moment the current flows from the charger through the cables to the EV’s battery pack. Alpitronic’s silicon carbide power modules help mitigate these losses.
“Compared to traditional silicon-based systems, silicon carbide allows our chargers to deliver higher power in a smaller footprint, generate less heat, and operate more quietly,” Doucleff said.
Alpitronic claims its HYC 400 chargers operate at 97.5% efficiency. So nearly all the energy you're billed for makes it into your car. That’s not always the case with other chargers, where a chunk of electricity vanishes into heat or gets lost in transmission, meaning you pay for power your battery never sees.
That's not to be mistaken for EV efficiency. EVs are far more efficient than gas cars, which convert less than a quarter of the fuel into actual propulsion. The rest disappears in combustion, drivetrain and transmission losses. EVs convert more than 90% of the battery energy into helping you move.
Can Alpitronic Continue To Grow Amid The EV Hostility?
Even though BloombergNEF has lowered its U.S. EV adoption forecast from 48% by 2030 to just 27% by the end of the decade, charging providers are preparing for the long term.
Plus, new players such as Mercedes-Benz High Power Charging and Walmart are increasingly focused on a charging experience that matches their brand identity, McDonald said.
If the owner of an EQS sedan or a BMW i7 gets a Temu-grade charging experience, that may end up hurting the brands. EV drivers may stop visiting Walmart if the chargers in the parking lot are broken. There's increasingly a financial case for improving America’s charging network.
Still, Alpitronic said it was too early to disclose the total number of chargers it has sold or deployed in the U.S. It also declined to mention its uptime figures—the percentage of time when the chargers are functioning as intended and are not out of order.
“While we’re not disclosing exact numbers at this stage, I can say that we are moving from dozens of deployed units to hundreds of deployed units to thousands in a very short time—and this growth is just the beginning,” Doucleff said.
Its global charging network is already bigger than Tesla’s. As per publicly disclosed figures, the Texas automaker has deployed over 70,000 Superchargers worldwide. Alpitronic is well ahead with more than 86,000 stalls in use—most of which are in Europe.
Now that it’s backed by some of America’s largest charging networks, its reliable fast chargers are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, and they might just be what helps the EV industry grow organically as federal support for EVs vanishes.
“We have a clear strategy, charging must always work,” Doucleff said.
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