Electric vehicles graduate from ‘science project’ status

Since 2011, Artisan Vehicle Systems has provided battery-powered vehicles for the mining sector by retrofitting diesel-powered equipment made by other manufacturers, such as Atlas Copco.

The California-based company makes electric motors and battery packs that it installs in underground mining equipment, such as load-haul-dump (LHD) vehicles and haul trucks.

But now, Artisan has made the leap from retrofitting vehicles to manufacturing its own battery-powered LHD. The company unveiled its futuristic-looking 153 LHD at the MINExpo International conference in Las Vegas in September.

“The interesting thing about our unit compared to others is that we didn’t start with a diesel piece and convert,” Artisan’s executive vice-president John Gravelle says. “We’ve never produced diesel equipment so we don’t have this baggage that comes with having a piece of diesel equipment and using that as your starting point.”

Artisan Vehicle Systems says its electric 153 offers several advantages over diesel-powered vehicles. Credit: Artisan Vehicle Systems.

As a result, Artisan’s 1.5-yard, 3-tonne LHD is smaller — 20% shorter than the diesel equivalent — yet three times more powerful. The machine is also quiet and doesn’t generate heat the way diesel equipment does — a plus in underground mines that can get very hot.

“Those are the dynamics that are really exciting … this is going to help move tonnes,” Gravelle says. “It’s going to be superior, it’s going to be far more manoeuvrable in tight spaces, which is generally what you have in narrow vein mines, it’s going to be easy to manoeuvre around corners, it’s going to be more powerful — it’s going to be able to get into the muckpile and dig faster and more efficiently.”

Artisan provided hybrid and electric powertrains for above-ground vehicles, including transport trucks, before adapting its technology for the rougher conditions of underground mining.

Its first mining client, Kirkland Lake Gold (TSX: KLG), approached Artisan in 2010, hoping to minimize spending on costly ventilation raises at its Macassa gold mine in Ontario as it expanded into deeper areas of the mine.

Since Kirkland Lake has proven the case for battery-powered vehicles in mining, Artisan has discovered other narrow-vein precious metal miners are interested in the technology.

That demand is what prompted Artisan to design and manufacture its own LHD, as the company found that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Atlas Copco (the main OEM that Artisan worked with at Macassa) weren’t interested in such a niche market, preferring to develop larger vehicles that are more widely used in mining.

When Artisan first teamed up with Kirkland Lake, Gravelle says the industry saw the venture as a “science project.” Now, competition in the space is increasing. Gravelle estimates there were eight to 10 OEMs at MINExpo that either had battery-powered offerings, or were close to introducing an electric vehicle for mining.

While he says many other OEMS still have to go through testing and debugging — which took Artisan two years — competition in the space is a good thing that will speed more widespread adoption of the technology in the industry.

“We need the market to really embrace battery power, and getting more competitors in is going to help do that, and make it the standard piece of equipment that’s used underground.”

Gravelle notes that battery power is much more efficient than diesel. “The amount of power you need to do the work is probably three-and-a-half or four times more for diesel.” In addition, electric vehicles use the energy created from braking to recharge the battery.

Battery technology hasn’t advanced enough to compete with diesel in open-pit applications, where both the machines and the hauls are bigger. But for underground mining, both the cost and the practicality of battery-powered vehicles have improved over the years.

The length of time a battery will last before it needs to be recharged varies from mine to mine, but they will generally last for a full shift, or for six hours of “seat time.” Artisan uses mine production data to model accurate predictions to new clients about battery requirements and costs.

While the batteries are heavy and need to be swapped out for a charged battery pack using a 3.5-tonne crane, the process only takes 10 minutes.

Moreover, Artisan has cut the charging time to one hour with a new cell design. Further improvements in charging and battery chemistry are inevitable, as the technology is continually evolving. (Artisan’s batteries use lithium-ion phosphate, which has less power than the lithium-cobalt chemistry used in Tesla’s electric vehicles, but no fire risk.)

On the cost side, electric vehicles are becoming more competitive. Instead of being priced at two to three times the cost of a comparable diesel vehicle, Artisan’s LHDs are available at only a small premium to diesel, not including the cost of the battery packs.

The battery packs are priced separately and are meant to be competitive with the cost of diesel and maintenance. Maintenance costs for electric vehicles are 30% lower than diesel, Gravelle says.

“What isn’t being used to justify the cost is maintenance savings, health and safety, labour productivity, increased production with the more powerful equipment and ability to perhaps reduce drift size, because you have a more manoeuvrable piece of equipment, or get more production out because it’s more powerful,” Gravelle says.

“All those factors can be really big, but … you don’t have to quantify those to justify the decision. That’s where we’re trying to get in the pricing point that we think will get this really running off the shelves.”