THE LEADER VOLUME 17 • NUMBER 6
A battery transition timeline
Editorial Director Paul Moore BSc ( Hons ), MSc Email : paul @ im-mining . com
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In its 2022 Investor Day presentation on May 17 , Caterpillar Inc through Group President of Resource Industries – Denise Johnson – gave more insight than before on the timeline for development and introduction of its battery electric zero emissions mining trucks .
She mentioned first of course the zero emissions machine agreements that have been made with customers to date with BHP , Rio Tinto , Newmont , Teck and NMG . “ These agreements are primarily focussed on the deployment of battery electric zero emissions trucks … we are focussed initially on introducing four zero emission truck models . Why trucks – 60-80 % of Scope 1 site emissions are attributed to diesel powered trucks . They ’ re the most plentiful mining machine onsite and as a result have the most emissions . We are working with these customers to place the trucks , the infrastructure and the technology on their sites to allow us to validate the extremes – long haul roads , deep pits , high altitude , extreme hot and cold conditions . And hit the timelines for beginning introduction before 2030 .”
Then Johnson moved on to the zero emissions mining truck timeline – and gave more insight than has been given before on the next steps . She revealed that it is working initially on having four available models . It is already clear this will include a battery version of the 231 t 793F ( Cat ’ s lineup previously included the electric drive 793F AC ) and electric drive 297 t 794 AC as these have already been referenced as part of its agreements with Rio Tinto ( deployment of 35-strong zero emissions and autonomous 793 fleet at the new Gudai-Darri iron ore mine in Australia ) and Teck Resources ( 30 Caterpillar zero-emission vehicles including Cat 794 ultra-class trucks in Elk Valley Coal beginning in 2027 ). Plus it seems likely that the other two models will be based on the remaining two units in its existing electric drive line-up – the 796 AC ( 327 t ) and 798 AC ( 372 t ).
She then had this to say on actual dates : “ Our accelerated development will be done at customer minesites . By later this year we will have prototypes running at our Tucson Proving Grounds , where we will validate our technical assumptions and complete machine technical feasibility . By early 2024 , we are sending what we call early learner units to customer sites where we will refine the requirements and do process development and product and technology validation . The pilot phase begins in 2025 where the goal is to validate multiple trucks at the site ; focused on fleet optimisation , including autonomy , getting infrastructure learning and also validating the production intent units . We intend to begin with full production in the 2027 timeframe .”
She added that Cat is also uniquely positioned to support mining sustainability through its power generation and power management capabilities , collaboration with customers directly on the minesites on things like microgrid development ; and autonomy being extended to include integrated power optimisation including autonomous management of machine battery charging as well as the power needs of the collective minesite assets as a whole . “ We believe that electrified machines will need to be fully automated to be optimised .”
On electrification , Johnson concluded : “ So this journey is going to require learning , it is going to require a lot of collaboration with our customers and its going to entail significant transformation of equipment and site infrastructure . Its going to be a pretty exciting and complex journey .” She also pointed out that the power requirements for running a minesite are going to be much greater than they are today with many more sources of power generation and storage . Renewables combined with storage solutions ; plus recip or gas turbine energy generation . Power will also need to be much more distributed across the site – for charging mobile fleets , either via static charging or trolley charging . All of this equates to a lot of new investment , learning and change management .
Moving on to Caterpillar and autonomy , Johnson gave some new numbers – 20 sites with 11 different customers across North and South America and Australia , with around 30 % productivity improvement seen across these sites which cover oil sands , iron ore , copper , gold , coal and lithium . It has over 525 autonomous trucks actively running – the most in the industry , with over 4 billion tonnes moved safely with zero injuries and with over 155 million kilometres of autonomous driving accumulated .
A really interesting slide covered cumulative adoption of autonomous Cat trucks – with projections of the autonomous Cat truck population ( including both active and in progress ) passing 800 in 2023 . Another important change is a shift from the dominance of field retrofit to “ new ” ex-factory autonomous trucks , while she added that since 2019 , Cat has won 7 out of 8 new greenfield autonomy orders and that most discussions with customers on fleets , whether new or existing , involve autonomy . A cited reason for the increased autonomy growth is the changing economics – back in 2013 , autonomy was being deployed only at the largest minesites – since then as the economics have improved , Command for hauling has been rolled out at progressively smaller mines to the point where it is now viable for mines with fleets of less than 20 trucks – and in 2022 / 2023 Cat autonomy will be deployed to sites with as few as 12 trucks . This means potential for a much larger customer base across smaller mines , quarrying and aggregates .
Paul Moore Editorial Director paul @ im-mining
JUNE 2022 | International Mining 3