MINING TYRES
Charging ahead with mining tyres
At MINExpo 2024, IM Editorial Director Paul Moore spoke to Lisa Hickey, Mining Social Responsibility Officer and Renaud Durand, Michelin Mining Technical Director about the challenge of mining tyres combined with battery electric trucks.
Q Battery electric large mining trucks are now operating in the market with Michelin tyres fitted – do you have tyres ready to meet the different demands that come from BEVs versus traditional diesel trucks?
For the battery electric trucks, we already have suitable tyres, for example, that are designed for high TKPH, or a higher speed rating. A good example is the Michelin 50 / 80R57 XDR 4 SPEED ENERGY TM tyre. This tyre has an optimised, more flexible tread and energy-saving rubber compound, that enables the tyre to run cooler and result in more energy being directed towards propelling the truck. When a mining vehicle carries a load and operates on various terrains, whether hard or soft, the tyre deforms and flexes, generating heat that results in energy loss and requires the vehicle to exert more effort to move forward. The new compound helps address this. At the Michelin CEMA test center in Almeria, Spain, we compared the Michelin 50 / 80R57 XDR 4 SPEED ENERGY TM tyre to the Michelin 50 / 80R57 XDR 250 C tyre on a Caterpillar 793 truck in flat conditions. Based on this internal testing, we estimate savings of around 3.6 % on diesel fuel consumption. This would result in savings of about 5,300 gallons of fuel, or $ 24,000 per truck annually 1. For a fleet of 50 trucks, this would equate to almost $ 1.2 million in annual savings and a reduction of 2,600 t of CO 2 emissions within a year 2. And, on a battery truck, a more efficient tyre still means greater sustainability as you are cutting down on your rolling resistance and motion resistance and therefore taking less energy from the battery. So, we are helping to extend the battery truck range with the tyre, bringing the customer greater productivity and reducing the battery recharging requirement. Everything we can do to increase the battery autonomy of the truck is significant in helping to make BEV mining trucks a success from an operational point of view.
Q What is the status of testing and trialling of the Michelin XDR 4 SPEED ENERGY TM tyre?
It has been extensively tested at our own CEMA test centre in southern Spain where we have more than 100 km of test tracks with different surfaces. But of course, we also need to test the tyre at various customer sites for real world performance data across different mined commodity types and climatic conditions. We are working on this today. Michelin is also investing in additional R & D to understand the effect of electric powertrains on mining trucks in terms of tyre performance; just as we did with autonomous haulage to better understand that.
Lisa Hickey, Sustainability Leader, Global Mining Business Line
Q What about issues like overall weight of the truck being higher due to battery modules plus potentially different weight distribution due to different placement of batteries versus an engine?
Of course, a higher weight is something we have to consider. We have a mining tyre range that is suitable for a normal payload, but we also have tyres designed to handle greater loads – for example the Michelin 50 / 80R57 XDR ® 250 +, the Michelin 59 / 80R63 XDR ® 4 EXTRA LOAD, and the Michelin 53 / 80 XDR ® 3 EXTRA LOAD. That said, despite weight parity, if the battery position means a different weight distribution, certain tyre positions may also require an EXTRA LOAD solution. In addition to weight, the torque on an electric truck is higher, so there is additional wear related to that.
Footnotes:
[ 1 ]
Considering an average cost of diesel of $ 4.45 / gallon based on July 15, 2024( U. S. West Coast), from the U. S. Energy Information Administration website.
[ 2 ]
Emission savings estimated based on 1 liter of diesel being equivalent to 2.66 kg of CO 2. challenges. The design team then works through a proven methodology to develop specifically engineered and‘ fit-for-purpose’ tooling to get the job done.
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46 International Mining | JULY 2025