As outlined in a statement shared with the Chinese media by Rio Tinto to coincide with a project celebration ceremony meeting, the Tier 1 miner and China’s State Power Investment Corporation Ltd (SPIC) green energy company SPIC Qiyuan are collaborating to pilot battery swapping technology at the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia. The two-year project will showcase a full battery-electric truck ecosystem, featuring eight 91-ton Tonly brand wide body trucks, 13 batteries (each 800 kWh), and a battery-swapping station, allowing for quick energy replenishment and minimising downtime.

Battery swapping means you can replace the battery of an electric mining truck at a battery swap station without the need to charge the vehicle at a fixed charging facility.

Jonathon McCarthy, Chief Decarbonisation Officer at Rio Tinto, was quoted saying that Rio Tinto and SPIC are cooperating to carry out application pilots for China’s existing cutting-edge technologies and innovations and evaluate their potential to help Rio Tinto reduce operational carbon emissions. “This pilot project will help us explore the application of pure electric battery swapping technology, which can provide greater flexibility and reduce downtime compared with current fixed charging technology.” He added that this work will complement ongoing pilot projects for the electrification of very large mining trucks in the Pilbara region.

Han Zhiwei, Chairman of SPIC Capital Holdings Co Ltd, said that through cooperation with Rio Tinto Group, SPIC has successfully introduced leading green transportation innovations to the international market and looks forward to more cooperation opportunities in the future to apply China’s innovations.

According to the release, these trucks will be responsible for performing tailings dam repair and surface soil transportation tasks, and will be operated and maintained by the Oyu Tolgoi mining team. The truck is designed to run for eight hours per charge, and the battery replacement process takes about seven minutes. By minimising energy replenishment and outage time, the vehicle attendance rate can be improved. The first truck is scheduled to arrive at the Oyu Tolgoi mining area this year, and the remaining seven trucks and charging and swapping infrastructure will be put into use in mid-2025.

Battery swapping is already relatively common in China for wide body mining truck fleets. Ren Hua, General Manager – Global Mining Machinery Business Division at XCMG, China’s leading mining equipment OEM, recently told IM at MINExpo 2024: “Our primary solution remains stationary plug-in charging, but we are also developing dynamic charging technologies. We have delivered a number of battery swapping solutions for wide-body trucks, allowing battery packs to be swapped from both sides or the top. Although battery swapping is more challenging for larger rigid trucks, we are actively conducting studies to adapt this technology for them as well.”