From Hardware to High Availability: How HEIDELBERG Amperfied is Revolutionizing EV Charging Infrastructure

In the rapidly evolving landscape of electromobility, the focus is shifting. While the early days of the EV transition were defined by a "gold rush" for hardware—installing as many wallboxes and charging stations as possible—the current era is defined by a critical realization: hardware is only as good as its uptime.

During a recent visit to the HEIDELBERG Amperfied Village in Wiesloch, Germany, it became clear that the industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Robin Karpp, CEO of Amperfied GmbH, a subsidiary of the venerable Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, is spearheading a strategic pivot. The company is moving away from being a single-product manufacturer toward becoming a holistic service partner. Their mission is to ensure that both new and existing charging infrastructure remains reliable, efficient, and, above all, functional. This commitment is encapsulated in their new service promise: PerformancePRIME.

The State of the Industry: Beyond the Expansion Metrics

To understand the necessity of this shift, one must look at the data. According to the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), the country boasted approximately 212,000 public charging points as of August—an increase of roughly 15 percent compared to the previous year. However, Karpp argues that these figures only tell part of the story. The private and semi-public charging sectors have seen even more aggressive growth.

"Regardless of whether it is a public, semi-public, or private charger, the one thing all these points have in common is that they must work," says Karpp. The frustration of arriving at a charger only to find it out of order is a common pain point that threatens to stall the wider adoption of electric vehicles. This remains true even considering that the average utilization rate of public charging stations in Germany currently sits at around 12 percent. While low utilization might seem like a reason to prioritize expansion, the industry is discovering that low reliability is a significant contributor to that very statistic.

Strategic Evolution: Learning from the Printing Industry

The decision to focus on the "after-sales" and maintenance phase was a calculated move. When Amperfied was spun off from the HEIDELBERG conglomerate, the leadership team evaluated several paths. Options included expanding into home energy management systems, such as stationary battery storage and heat pumps.

Instead, they chose to double down on the utilization phase of charging technology. The strategy draws direct inspiration from their parent company’s core business model. For decades, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG has successfully balanced a multi-billion euro revenue stream from hardware sales with a nearly identical figure generated through after-sales support and maintenance.

Since 2022, HEIDELBERG Amperfied has been building an organization dedicated entirely to the period after the initial installation. While the parent company retains control over the production and quality assurance of the charging hardware, Amperfied is solely responsible for development, sales, and comprehensive after-sales services. Much like the printing press industry, where contracts are increasingly based on guaranteed machine performance rather than mere equipment sales, Amperfied aims to shoulder the technology risk for the entire operational life of the charger.

Interestingly, this shift has not cannibalized their hardware business. In fact, demand for standard wallboxes is seeing a resurgence, and the production lines currently employ more people than they did two years ago.

The "Uptime" Mandate: Why Maintenance Outperforms New Business

Amperfied’s service model leverages the extensive infrastructure that HEIDELBERG has developed globally over the past two decades, with over 1,000 employees in Europe alone. This scale allows for rapid response times: in most cases, the team responds within an hour, and if a physical intervention is required, technicians are on-site within four hours.

The company is currently active in Germany, the Benelux region, Spain, Italy, and, most recently, the United Kingdom. Crucially, their technicians are certified to service AC and DC products from roughly 15 different third-party manufacturers.

"Our primary target market is the existing stock," Karpp emphasizes. Currently, between 22,000 and 25,000 charging points are connected to their maintenance backend, processing approximately 300 data points per second. More than half of these points operate under active service contracts, and a significant portion are not even manufactured by Amperfied. The company operates under the philosophy that ripping out perfectly functional equipment to replace it with new hardware is "always the second-best solution."

However, they have developed their own DC charging technology—the Amperfied Dynamic DC—specifically because it allows for deeper diagnostics, which is the cornerstone of their UptimePRIME package.

The Economic Model: Performance-Based Charging

The UptimePRIME package is designed to alleviate the financial burdens associated with EV infrastructure. Clients do not purchase the DC charging system; they lease it. This removes the need for large upfront capital expenditures (CapEx). Instead, the client pays a fixed rate of five to nine euros per operating hour. For a high-performance charging (HPC) site with multiple points, this translates to a monthly fee of roughly 5,000 to 6,000 euros.

The value proposition is simple: the contract guarantees a specific level of charging point availability. If the agreed-upon uptime is not met, the monthly rate is automatically reduced. "If the charging point doesn’t work, we are the ones running to fix it," says Karpp. Furthermore, the rate is capped; it will never increase, providing budget certainty for site operators.

Quantifying the "Hidden" Costs of Inefficiency

The scale of the problem is significant. HEIDELBERG Amperfied handles between 70 and 100 service cases every week in Germany alone. Within their own maintenance backend, they observe availability rates that generally range from 75 to 98 percent, though some systems in the field languish at around 50 percent.

Beyond the cost of repairs, there are the "hidden" process costs. For companies managing multiple locations, the administrative burden of reporting malfunctions, coordinating technician visits, and obtaining management approval for repairs is substantial. Karpp estimates that this administrative overhead is roughly equivalent to a full-time position costing 70,000 euros annually—a cost that effectively disappears when outsourced to a managed service like Amperfied’s.

For those who wish to maintain ownership of their equipment while offloading the operational burden, the company offers BusinessPRIME. In this model, the site owner retains control, but Amperfied manages the entire operational lifecycle in the background.

The Road Ahead: Normalizing the EV Experience

HEIDELBERG Amperfied is essentially targeting two groups: the site operators and the end-users. The company recognizes that the operator’s business model only succeeds if the driver is satisfied.

"At a gas station, nobody worries about whether the pump will work," Karpp notes. "But at a charging point, many drivers already subconsciously prepare themselves for a failure. That is a state of affairs that we cannot accept."

The vision is clear: in three to five years, the majority of the existing charging infrastructure should be under professional management contracts. Karpp hopes that by then, a significant portion of Europe’s charging infrastructure will be secured by HEIDELBERG Amperfied, turning the "charging lottery" into a reliable, mundane, and self-evident part of daily life.

By focusing on the lifecycle rather than the point of sale, Amperfied is not just selling hardware; they are selling the confidence that when a driver pulls up to a plug, they will be able to power their journey without a second thought. As the infrastructure matures, this shift toward "uptime as a service" may well be the defining factor that finally pushes electric mobility into the mainstream.