Electric and hybrid vehicles for construction, agriculture and mining will be a $30 billion market in 2025. Companies such as Komatsu, John Deere and Caterpillar manufacture the big vehicles, mainly hybrid whilst other manufacturers offer smaller, pure-electric versions. IDTechEx's report Electric Vehicles for Construction, Agriculture and Mining 2015-2025 www.idtechex.com/mining explains all with detailed forecasts, comparisons and assessments.
Pure electric is a legal requirement indoors but outdoors fuel savings and better performance is attractive. Cranes and man lifters have many applications – reaching unit sales of 189,000 by 2025 according to market research analysts IDTechEx.
This industry is about to change radically. For example, in mining, over 90% of the world's mines are open cast. They are often in remote areas up to 4000 meters above sea level, where shipping diesel can cost more than buying it. Consequently, there is now a move to have 350 kW giant haul trucks working the floor and separately the top of the mine with electric rail-veyors lifting the ore from bottom to top. With an all-electric solution new pollution laws can be met whilst saving money from the electricity coming from the mine's own wind turbines and photovoltaics.
The electrification of vehicles has a higher value proposition in the mining vehicle industry where the costs of operation have increased in relation to the volatility of diesel prices; in addition through electrification of vehicles the high costs of ventilation of diesel emissions inside mines can be substantially reduced. However the mining industry is currently in a bust period after a boom period that ended in 2012 and now structural changes are planned in the coal industry. The cyclical nature of the mining industry means that large volumes of new equipment will not be acquired by mining industries before 2018, therefore delaying the adoption of electric mining vehicles.
The report details how mines will electrify more but only after the current bust period of the boom-and-bust that characterises this industry. It shows why the ubiquitous tractor in agriculture will be electric in volume quantities by 2025 and how new forms of vehicle design are coming. It explains what new technologies will arrive and why.
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