Ador group forays into DC chargers

Can you give us a background on your firm, Ador Digatron?
The ADOR Group is a 114 year old Indian group that commenced operations in 1908. The group has been involved in the core infrastructure sector developing welding & battery related technology over many decades, supplying both Indian & global markets.  In 2013 Ador entered into a joint venture with Digatron of Germany,  - the world leader in design of specialised equipment for manufacturing, as well equipment for testing & charging of batteries.  We design and manufacture specialised equipment for manufacture of lithium ion batteries and other chemistries for South Asia, South East Asia and Middle East & Africa from our large facility based in Pune.

When did the foray into DC chargers happen? Has the technology been developed entirely in house?
As we manufacture equipment for companies that make batteries, we noticed a global trend around 2015 with increasing demand for manufacture of lithium-ion battery technology, essentially for EVs.  It became clear to us at that time that the global EV mega trend was upon us and that we needed to be a part of this.  We took 2 years to analyse and understand the space to identify which part of the value chain we wanted to participate in.  Within the eco system opportunities exist to design and manufacture AC slow Chargers (destination or home & office chargers) , DC Fast chargers (distress chargers on highways, or fleet operations chargers), charge point operations, infrastructure systems integration projects, or simply through provision of enabling software for charger controllers, paywalls and customer management.

We eventually came to the conclusion that DC Fast chargers is a complex challenge which few have mastered as it bring together a number of competences including very specialised power electronics, software controls, mechanical design for street furniture and an electrical competence.

Till recently a majority of the fast charger supplies comprised of equipment imported from China and partly assembled in India,  or imports of expensive equipment from Europe.  We saw that we could clearly deliver value to this sector as the choices to the customer were either very expensive or on the other end of the spectrum – unreliable equipment.  Our opportunity was to create a proud, Indian, resilient Indian fast charging technology and we set about on this journey in 2018.

Our team comprises brilliant engineers in both India & Germany who worked together to design India's first atma-nirbhar charger.   We had separate teams working on software controller design, customer management software, power electronics module design and street furniture design.  It took us 14 months to go from concept to proto and then commercial launch which took place on 26 Jan 2021 when we launched the Ador DC Quench 60KW and 120KW fast chargers. This will soon be followed with our 150KW,  240KW and 350KW versions.  On 15 August 2021 we also launched our range of 7.5KW and 22KW AC destination(A/C slow) chargers designed for Charge Point Operators (CPOs) as well, increasing our range of products.

Whilst the technology has been developed entirely in house – our philosophy  has been to design a product that is born global.  Our partner Digatron has manufacturing plants in the US and Germany where our Quench chargers will be either remanufactured or assembled soon with completely knocked down (CKD) kits from India.  We are proud that we were able to design a product that enables one of the few stories of CKD kits being sent from India to the world for manufacturing rather than the other way around.