BATTERY AND ELECTRIC MACHINES
In addition, Cummins is acquiring First Mode’ s commercial portfolio, manufacturing and technical teams in Australia, the US and Chile. First Mode has stated that this includes its mine haulage proving grounds in Centralia, in the US.
This acquisition“ reinforces Cummins’ commitment to providing innovative and effective decarbonisation solutions and will allow the company to elevate its product portfolio while meeting the needs of customers on their transition to a lowercarbon future, it said, adding that First Mode would operate within the Power Systems industrial segment.
“ This acquisition is an important step forward in our goal to lead our Power Systems customers through the energy transition,” Jenny Bush, President of Power Systems at Cummins, said.“ With First Mode’ s hybrid retrofit technology, we are accelerating our ability to provide decarbonisation solutions that meet miners’ need to drive down operating costs today.” Through product hybridisation and clean fuels such as ethanol and methanol, Cummins is developing bridge technologies that enable miners to maximise the life of existing fleets while reducing carbon emissions.
“ Cummins’ dedication to partnering with original equipment manufacturers and miners ensures that these technologies are developed and tested in real-world environments,” Bush added.“ With hybrid retrofit kits, modular component upgrades and scalable solutions, we are bringing miners the flexibility and confidence they need to decarbonise operations while adapting to evolving technologies and infrastructure.”
First Mode stated:“ We have a robust customer pipeline that we will deliver to this year, and then scale our commercial trials into fleet trials in 2026.”
Entry-level fleet decarbonisation
Switch Technologies, a heavy-duty battery and electric vehicle engineering services provider, is also competing in the same field as Cummins / First Mode when it comes to hybridising mining equipment.
Last year, it announced it had teamed up with niobium battery anode materials provider, Echion Technologies, to develop a Toyota Land Cruiser 79 Series vehicle that had been modified into a plug-in hybrid configuration with a 24-kWh battery.
This vehicle, which participated in a live track demonstration at the Australian Automation and Robotics Precinct( AARP) in Perth, Australia, on December 3, is equipped with cells manufactured by Li- FUN, an XNO ® cell development partner. XNO anode chemistry enables lithium-ion batteries to safely fast charge in less than 10 minutes, maintain high energy densities even at extreme temperatures and deliver high-power across a cycle life of more than 10,000 cycles, Echion claims.
In the case of the Land Cruiser, this could see it complete around 90 % of what is considered a typical underground shift for a light utility vehicle on battery power alone, according to Jan Haak, Managing Director and Chief Revenue Officer of Switch Technologies. He said this ability, which significantly removes the diesel emissions generated by an underground vehicle, plus the comfort level of being able to complete, say, a three-hour drive to go and pick up some parts,“ resonated” with the mining community.
He expanded:“ Add to these the innate safety characteristics that XNO offers – particularly the reduction in thermal runaway risk that the entire industry is aware of – while similarly enabling our customers to fast charge the battery in 5-6 minutes, plus offer all the quirks that operators have come to expect( wind-up windows, plastic floor coverings, etc), and we think we have a significant draw card on our hands.”
The vehicle in question is expected to head back to the AARP this year for“ stress testing”, laying the foundations for not only a commercial light vehicle offering, but also an XNO-powered hybrid retrofit kit for much larger vehicles, specifically Caterpillar 785 and Caterpillar 789 trucks.
Switch and Echion’ s work on the hybrid Land Cruiser has laid the foundations for not only a commercial light vehicle offering, but also an XNO-powered hybrid retrofit kit for much larger vehicles
Switch is currently developing the retrofit kit that can be equipped on both haul trucks, with agreements in place for“ scaling the technology” with the necessary workshops and workforce, he added. Haak said a mining customer has already pledged one donor 785 vehicle to be fitted with a prototype kit.
The two vehicles, a 142-t payload Cat 785 and a 193-t-payload Cat 789, will require a bigger battery – Haak foresees it being around a 150-kWh battery pack – but possibly no stationary charging. Hitting this battery size, while maintaining high power regeneration and keeping the weight and volume in check, is uniquely enabled by XNO, the company claims.
Mike O’ Hanlon, Founder and CTO of Switch Technologies, said:“ This is not a plug-in hybrid vehicle; it spends no time plugged in, charging up. It is purely regenerative.”
Haak says there isn’ t anything to stop it being charged by an MCS or CCS-2 charger, but the idea behind the haul truck project is to remove the charging bottleneck, both in charge speed and infrastructure.
Cummins says First Mode’ s technology“ represents the first commercially available retrofit hybrid system for mining equipment, significantly reducing total cost of ownership while advancing decarbonisation in operations”
Sandvik overcoming BEV implementation hurdles
Ramp regeneration has also been on the agenda for Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions, with the company’ s line of battery-electric vehicles.
24 International Mining | MAY 2025