Caterpillar announced yesterday that it has achieved the next milestone in the company’s battery electric truck development journey, reinforcing its commitment to providing zero-exhaust emissions solutions for customers.
The next generation of Caterpillar’s battery electric Large Mining Trucks have arrived at select customer sites for testing and validation. Caterpillar says it has now completed building and testing seven Cat® 793 XE Early Learner battery electric trucks at its Tucson Proving Ground facility in Green Valley, Arizona.
This marks the second development phase of the company’s Early Learner program following the successful demonstration of its first battery electric 793 prototype in November 2022. Caterpillar will also continue testing and validating some of the Early Learner model trucks at its proving ground facility.
The company highlighted one of these next generation 793 XEs at the Tucson Proving Grounds to a select group of media yesterday. Caterpillar also showcased a prototype 775 XE, a battery-electric version of the 70.5-ton payload diesel-powered truck.
Caterpillar Group President, Denise Johnson, says: “We added this Early Learner phase to intentionally send battery electric trucks to customer sites earlier than we have before in our traditional product development process. These Early Learner machines will be used to refine requirements, develop processes and validate both the machine and technology designs. Testing these trucks at our customers’ sites will provide invaluable feedback for our battery truck program.”
Caterpillar launched its Early Learner program in 2021 to accelerate its development and validation of Cat battery electric large mining trucks with support from key mining customers and Cat dealers. The company expanded the Early Learner program to include Off-Highway Trucks to support increasing demand from the quarry and aggregates industries.
One of the primary objectives of the program is for Caterpillar to collaborate more closely with its customers to better understand the impacts of the energy transition on a mine site’s people, processes, infrastructure and technology. The Early Learner phase of the program will be key to witnessing those impacts in real world environments. It will also be critical to validate the enhanced design elements of the 793 XE.
Caterpillar Vice President Brian Weller explains: “In less than two years, we went from retrofitting an existing piece of equipment at our proving ground to designing a ruggedised solution ready for validation at our customers’ sites. This was not a small change. Just about everything in the powertrain has been enhanced while still leveraging proven components of our Cat 793 model. With these changes, we still have learning to do with our customers in real-world applications.”
Caterpillar’s next phase of the Early Learner program will be to integrate multiple electrified trucks at sites, validating the integration of a battery electric fleet with Caterpillar’s autonomous and fleet management systems.