EVWire brief: 100 hundred battery-electric fully autonomous mining trucks from Chinese manufacturer XCMG have officially entered service at the Huaneng Yimin open-pit coal mine in Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia, with plans to deploy 300 in the next three years. This is the largest of such fleet in the world.
Context:
The rEVolution is well underway, just unevenly distributed all across the globe. While you and I drive a passenger EV to work wherever we are, some others are deploying 100 electric mining trucks on the other side of the world.
The technology from Huawei gives the ZNK95 electric trucks the self-driving capabilities, and the batteries are swappable in just 6 minutes, which are charged by solar panels. The company says the fleet achieves 20% higher efficiency than traditional diesel-powered vehicles with a driver.
This operation also became the world’s first open-pit mine leveraging 5G-Advanced (5G-A) technology for fully autonomous operations.
Here’s a video of the trucks in operation:
NEWS: China has rolled out the world’s largest fleet of driverless mining trucks, featuring 100 vehicles equipped with Huawei Technologies’ autonomous driving systems.
The trucks are designed to autonomously load and unload mining material, as well as operate in harsh weather at
— #Sawyer Merritt (#@SawyerMerritt)
11:27 PM • May 18, 2025
Source: South China Morning Post
