BATTERY AND ELECTRIC VEHICLES
used by many of the OEMs, electrification technology providers and mining companies engaging in the latest crop of hybrid trials at open-pit mine sites in the Western world,” he told IM.“ They’ re using such terminology as they are hedging their bets on what technology to back, from chemistry to the pack level. However, from the point of view of battery cell suppliers and downstream pack makers, this market uncertainty makes it hard to justify changes to their existing form factors which have been developed for less intensive applications, due to the cost of change.
Led by battery manufacturers such as CATL, China’ s battery-electric offering for mining tends to be tied to LFP chemistry, with the perceived lack of energy density for heavy-duty applications being made up for with a lower price point and the ability to carry out battery swaps, and by meeting power requirements by putting in“ as big a pack as possible”.
“ Most of the brand names outside of China are looking at LTO,” Ting says.“ After applying the filters of the need for a long life, fast charging option, the likes of LFP and NMC( nickel manganese cobalt) simply don’ t cut it. LTO, at least has been in the market for nearly 20 years, and is viewed as a‘ safe, off-the-shelf’ option.”
Ting is convinced that the XNO solution can more than compete with LTO.
Lithium-ion batteries designed with Echion XNO anode materials achieve a unique combination of high safety, extreme fast-charge and discharge capability, and very long cycle-life, according to the company, saying that they achieve this together with up to double the energy density of market-leading LTO cells.
“ This unique performance envelope is ideal for high-power batteries electrifying heavy-duty commercial and industrial applications, a premium, fast-growing market driven by total cost of ownership,” the company added.
Ting added:“ Even with the cohort that appear to be in the LTO camp, there is a reticence to look beyond an initial trial or an initial batch of batteries. To me, that is a clear signal that they are still looking for something better from than LTO, particularly from an energy density perspective.”
Ting and the wider Echion team are confident they can showcase the benefits of using XNO in mining applications through the hybrid project they are working on, in addition to some pure battery-electric vehicle( BEV) concepts and trials they are engaged in.
“ There are a lot of eyes on our trial with Switch Technologies,” he said.“ Once they see that vehicle operating and see the numbers behind it, I think there will be more companies considering how they might transition away from thinking about solely LTO chemistry.”
This hoped for transition in thinking is coming at the same time as operators and integrators are increasingly looking for interim or bridging solutions for their haulage fleets, as opposed to going straight to electric propulsion from the off.
“ Particularly in the big trucks above, say, 150 tonnes, the conversations we have had in the last year have been about how small a battery you can fit on a truck to make a positive economic and environmental case for hybridisation,” Ting said.“ This is night and day compared with, say, three years ago when it was all about sticking as much battery as possible onto the truck to make it fully electric.”
This is seeing the company scope out projects to fit, say, three battery packs on a truck that has an available size envelope to fit more than double that.
“ Now we have sophisticated modelling to hand and have run numerous pit profiles in terms of simulations, we can often make a strong business case – in terms of fuel savings and the amount of power you need to get high acceleration to speed on grade over particular areas of a mine – for engineering the battery package in such a way as to reduce the upfront cost and allow for further room to add more battery packs in the future.”
The idea of scalability such as this in a hybrid application hasn’ t really been discussed in recent years, but that is what Ting envisages happening in certain instances.
“ I know I mentioned at The Electric Mine last year that XNO batteries are likely to be able to do upwards of 15,000 cycles over their lifetime,” he said.“ In these types of applications – which are nowhere near as energy intensive as some of the pure BEV applications I have seen – we have actually been modelling up to 30,000 cycles in some instances.”
While hybrids are very much top of mind for the company at the moment, Ting says some longer-dated work with a mining company looking to fully electrify its 40-60-t payload open-pit fleet could also get the sector talking.
“ This work is going to provide food for thought for people who currently look at trucks of this size class coming out of China that are fully electric with LFP-based batteries,” he said.“ These tend to rely on battery swapping and the ability to acquire extra trucks for redundancy due to the low price point.
“ I think we will be able to eventually become a new‘ data point’ in this discussion, pushing what the one truck can do with a niobium-based battery from a productivity standpoint, while reducing the upfront and ongoing costs associated with acquiring and sustaining the battery-electric haulage fleet.”
Interim tech innovation
Still on the hybrid train, mining services company, Thiess, and technology pioneer, FLANDERS, recently confirmed they were working on a trial to test hybrid retrofit technology on a Cat 793D haul truck in New South Wales, Australia.
Speaking in its 2025 Sustainability Report, Thiess said, in lieu of commercial fully electric solutions, it was focusing on interim technologies to bridge the gap. A key focus area for it is agnostic hybrid solutions to suit existing diesel and diesel-electric mining equipment.
Thiess said:“ Agnostic hybrid solutions offer the ability to technology-stack with other market solutions as these become commercially available. The current industry preference to extend the life of assets through zero hour rebuilds offers Thiess an opportunity to install hybrid kits on
Gold Fields’ Granny Smith gold mine in the eastern Goldfields welcomed Epiroc’ s Minetruck MT66 S eDrive to Wallaby recently for a six-month performance trial
International Mining | APRIL 2025