Enphase (ENPH) to begin US manufacturing as solar demand climbs, new EV products coming
Enphase (ENPH) is leading the way toward a sustainable future as the world’s leading microinverter-based solar and battery systems supplier. With an increasing demand for solar energy and new headwinds from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Enphase is set to begin manufacturing in the US.
The microinverter leader also announced several upcoming EV charging products during its Q1 earnings release on Tuesday.
After introducing the first microinverter-based solar system in 2008, Enphase has enabled millions of customers to harness natural energy from the sun.
Enphase’s easy-to-use solar systems harness solar energy, store it in batteries, and allow you to use and manage it when needed. The IQ battery storage systems offer a scalable solution to store energy with 10.1 kWh and 3.4 kWh capacity available.
Most importantly, Enphase’s technology, such as its IQ8 solar microinverters, can provide backup power even when the grid is down. The Enphase IQ8 is the industry’s first grid-forming microinverter with split-phase power conversion abilities to convert DC power to AC.
Pairing a microinverter such as the Enphase IQ8 with its IQ batteries can give homeowners peace of mind when the grid goes down, offering independent sustainable energy.
The company’s proprietary tech collects data, allowing you to make, use, save, or sell energy directly from the Enphase app.
Earlier this year, Enphase began production of Enphase-branded EV chargers in Mexico, giving way to the expanding need for reliable solutions. The company shipped over 8,600 EV chargers in the first quarter alone.
Enphase has also introduced bi-directional EV charging to complete the all-in-one solar home energy system, which will be available soon.
In the second quarter of 2022, the Enphase IQ8 microinverter was the first to be certified by UL, a global safety science leader, to UL 1741. It meets the new North American safety and grid interconnection standards for connecting solar inverters, energy storage systems, and distributed energy resources to the grid.
Enphase adding US manufacturing capacity
With the growing demand for renewable energy, including solar and battery storage, Enphase announced it would begin manufacturing in the US.
During its first quarter 2023 earnings release, Enphase stated:
Starting in the second quarter of 2023, we are adding manufacturing capacity in the United States due to the global demand for our products as well as the incentives related to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which will bring our total global quarterly capacity to more than 10.0 million microinverters as we exit 2023.
Enphase shipped 4,830,589 microinverters – roughly 1,957.2 megawatts DC – and 102.4 mWh of IQ batteries in the first quarter of 2023, generating $726 million in revenue.
The IRA bill, passed last August, bumped up the solar tax credit to 30% from 26%, an increase that will remain in effect until 2032.
According to a new forecast from BloombergNEF, the US will add enough solar and wind energy over the next seven years to power over 100 million homes.
For one, there are only 140 million homes in the US in total, so 100 million would be massive by 2030. And second, this presents a considerable opportunity for Enphase, which is why it will begin manufacturing in the US with the first of three contract manufacturing partners in the second quarter of 2023.
Enphase says it’s set to introduce several new products to support the EV rollout, including introducing its new IQ smart chargers in Q2, as well as bringing bi-directional charging to the market next year.
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Just after Tesla launched its ‘Full Self-Driving’ package, in China, the country announced that it cracking down on automated driving features with new limitations.
In February, Tesla launched a first version of its “Full Self-Driving” FSD package in China for owners with the latest “Hardware 4.0”, or “HW4”, vehicles.
Most of the features under Tesla’s FSD package have been limited to North America due to Tesla training its system for this market first and due to regulatory limitations in other markets.
Shortly after Tesla launched FSD in China, the American automaker had to pause its rollout due to updated requirements from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
Now, MIIT has confirmed that it held a meeting with automotive industry stakeholders yesterday, and it has further clarified the rollout of advanced driver assistance (ADAS) features.
CNEV reported on the meeting:
Car companies were asked to refrain from using words like “self-driving,” “autonomous driving,” “smart driving,” “advanced smart driving,” and instead use the term “combined assisted driving” to avoid misleading consumers, according to the minutes of the meeting.
Tesla had already changed the name from ‘Full Self-Driving’ to “Intelligent Assisted Driving” following the launch in China.
Based on a statement from MIIT, the meeting focused on enforcing the previously announced updated requirements that launched right after Tesla introduced FSD in China (translated from Chinese):
The meeting emphasized that automobile manufacturers must deeply understand the requirements of the “Notice”, fully carry out combined driving assistance testing and verification, clarify the system functional boundaries and safety response measures, and must not make exaggerations or false propaganda. They must strictly fulfill their obligation to inform, and truly assume the main responsibility for production consistency and quality safety, and truly improve the safety level of intelligent connected vehicle products.
Regulators want automakers to reduce the frequency of new software updates and instead focus on extended testing before releasing new updates.
The last few months have been quite chaotic for ADAS systems in China. Along with Tesla’s FSD release, several Chinese companies released their systems, including BYD, Xiaomi, and Huawei.
Xiaomi reported a fatal accident in which its ADAS system was active just seconds before the crash, and Tesla owners using FSD racked up thousands of dollars in fines due to FSD making mistakes.
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The Global Payments Company logo seen displayed on a smartphone.
Igor Golovniov | LightRocket | Getty Images
Global Payments shares tumbled 17% on Thursday after the company said it’s buying Worldpay for more than $24 billion while simultaneously selling its Issuer Solutions business to Fidelity National Information Services.
The company said that in acquiring Worldpay, which FIS had purchased in 2019 before later selling a majority stake, it’s expanding its reach and will be able to serve over 6 million customers across more than 175 countries, enabling $3.7 trillion in annual payment volume.
In selling its Issuer Solutions unit to FIS for $13.5 billion, Global Payments is divesting a unit for back-end financial processing that’s long been viewed as a stable provider of growth. In the end, Global Payments is going bigger in providing payments services to merchants, while FIS is focusing on issuer processing.
FIS bought Worldpay for about $35 billion in 2019 and sold most of its stake last year to GTCR.
Global Payments said on Thursday that it obtained committed bridge financing and plans to issue $7.7 billion of debt “to replace the bridge commitment and refinance Worldpay’s outstanding debt.”
Global Payments CEO Cameron Bready called it a “defining day,” and said the transaction gives the company “significantly expanded capabilities, extensive scale, greater market access and an enhanced financial profile.”
But Wall Street was less enthusiastic. While the acquisition gives Global Payments a larger footprint in payment processing, analysts at Mizuho described it as a strategic step backward.
Mizuho reiterated its neutral rating on the stock, warning that “the business could be seeing more meaningful margin pressure than investors acknowledge.” The analysts wrote that FIS won the trade, getting the “crown jewel” with Global Payments getting “more of the same.”
FIS shares rose more than 8% on Thursday.
Both deals are expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approval.
The Tesla Cybertruck is in crisis. The automaker is still sitting on a ton of old inventory, which it is now heavily discounting, and it is throttling down production to try to avoid building up the inventory again.
When launching the production version of the Cybertruck in late 2023, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that the vehicle program would reach 250,000 units a year in 2025:
“I think we’ll end up with roughly a quarter million Cybertrucks a year, but I don’t think we’re going to reach that output rate next year. I think we’ll probably reach it sometime in 2025.”
We are now in 2025, and Tesla is expected to currently be selling the Cybertruck at a rate of about 25,000 units a year – a tenth of what Musk predicted.
Earlier this month, we reported that Tesla began the second quarter with 2,400 Cybertrucks in inventory, valued at over $200 million.
This is a real problem for Tesla as many of those Cybertrucks are older 2024 model year units not eligible for the federal tax credit, and even some ‘Foundation Series’, which Tesla stopped building in October 2024 – meaning that Tesla is sitting on some 6-month-old trucks in some cases.
Tesla is now offering deeper discounts on the new inventory of Cybertrucks. The discounts can go as high as $10,000, but the average one is closer to $8,000, which is more than the tax credit:
Despite Tesla’s efforts, the automaker has only reduced its Cybertruck inventory by about 100 units since the beginning of the month.
Tesla is now further throttling down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas, according to a new report from Business Insider.
According to two Tesla workers speaking with BI, the automaker has reduced its Cybertruck production teams and now operates at a fraction of its original capacity. It also moved some Cybertruck production workers to Model Y production at the plant.
One of the workers said:
“It feels a lot like they’re filtering people out. The parking lot keeps getting emptier.”
As we previously reported, Tesla has been operating all its factories at approximately 60% capacity to avoid building up excessive inventory amid lower demand.
When it comes to the Cybertruck program, it sounds like Tesla is lowering production even further.
Last week, Tesla launched a new version of the Cybertruck in an attempt to boost demand, but it has been poorly received due to the automaker’s removal of many essential features.
Electrek’s Take
There are a lot of other automakers that would have already given up on the Cybertruck ith these results, but not Tesla. Musk is not one to admit defeat easily.
However, Tesla is running out of options.
The new Cybertruck RWD was a desperate attempt, and I doubt it will work. Now, it sounds like Tesla is further throttling down production – virtually confirming that the new trim didn’t help.
The next step would be a complete production pause.
Again, I don’t think Musk wants to admit defeat, but at some point, it’s inevitable.
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