The Swiss company E-Mining from Heimberg, working with Empa, the University of Bern and NTB Interstaatlicke Hochschule fur Technik Buchs, took an old mining truck and equipped it with an all-electric transmission, making it the world's largest electric vehicle.
What's more, this car, dubbed the E-Dumper, has the largest battery ever installed on an electric vehicle. But the most interesting thing is that under the right operating conditions, the E-Dumper electric dump truck generates such an amount of energy, which is practically enough to satisfy its own needs.
The base for the electric E-Dumper is the giant Komatsu HD605-7 mining truck, from which its native 23-liter diesel engine has been extracted. Instead, powerful electric motors and a 600 kWh battery were installed. And the resulting electric "monster" went to work at the Pery quarry, located 100 kilometers from Zurich.
The organization of the quarry gave the E-Dumper a unique opportunity to generate the energy it needed. An empty dump truck climbs the mountain, where it is loaded with 60 tons of stones. Driving down a 13-degree downhill with a heavy load, the E-Dumper uses its engines as electrical generators to charge its huge battery. And the energy generated in one descent is enough for the empty E-Dumper to climb the mountain again for the next loading.
Contrary to some reports, we note that the E-Dumper does not generate more energy than it consumes, and does not give excess energy to the general grid. This is especially pronounced in winter, when driving on snow requires increased energy consumption, and the car's battery operates at low temperatures, i.e. far from optimal. Because of this, the electric E-Dumper has to spend a short period of time at the charger every day.
Nevertheless, even with a suboptimal operating mode, the E-Dumper dump truck will move 300 thousand tons of rock over ten years of operation, saving the combustion of half a million liters of diesel fuel and reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere by 1,300 tons. And all this in itself is quite a great achievement.
Promotional video:
To be fair, we point out that the cost of an electric dump truck E-Dumper is 2.5 times higher than the cost of the same vehicle with a diesel engine, and the unique working conditions in the Pery quarry will not be repeated in all mining areas. But, in any case, the E-Dumper is a terrific solution for places where operating such vehicles will have economic and environmental benefits.