A Chinese coal mine now runs 100 battery electric haul trucks that do the work of 300 diesel trucks and 1,200 drivers

What 100 electric trucks replaced in Inner Mongolia

A haul truck is a large truck built to carry rock or ore inside a mine. Since May 2025, the Yimin coal mine in Inner Mongolia, China, the second biggest open pit coal mine in the country, has run 100 battery electric, self driving haul trucks. Open pit means the coal is dug from a hole open to the sky, not underground tunnels. The mine previously needed around 300 diesel trucks and 1,200 drivers to run 24 hours a day, according to Mining Technology. Each electric truck carries a 568 kilowatt hour lithium iron phosphate battery, a type of battery built for a long working life rather than the longest possible range. A flat battery is swapped for a charged one in around 5 minutes, with a success rate over 98%, so the truck barely stops working. The trucks keep running in temperatures as low as minus 48.5 degrees Celsius.

The Huaneng Ruichi trucks have set three new records for autonomous electric mining trucks, the world's largest payload, fastest running speed and lowest operating temperature.

Li Shuxue, chairman of Huaneng Inner Mongolia Eastern Energy. Source 1.

Battery trucks already outnumber the retrofit kind, worldwide

Trolley assist is a system that connects a haul truck to an overhead electric line, like the wires above a train track, so the engine draws power from the wire instead of burning diesel on that stretch. GlobalData, a data and analytics company, counted 271 trolley assist trucks and 387 fully battery powered trucks running at surface mines worldwide by April 2025, a count reported by Mining Technology. Fully battery powered trucks already outnumber the trolley assist kind.

Battery operated vehicles are essential in supporting the move to net zero in mining.

Bruce Warner, global transportation segment manager at Hitachi Energy. Source 2.

A Swedish copper mine measured exactly what electrifying its line saves

Boliden, a mining company, fitted 4 CAT 795 haul trucks with current collectors, metal arms that touch an overhead wire and carry power to the truck, at its Aitik copper mine in Sweden, starting in 2018. On the 700 metre stretch of line, the trucks speed up from 15 to 30 kilometres an hour and save 25 litres of diesel on every single crossing. In late 2019, Boliden decided to extend the line to 3 kilometres and fit 10 more trucks, bringing the Aitik total to 14. At Kevitsa, a nickel mine in Finland, Boliden converted 13 trucks and plans 10 more, MAOWCE calculates a planned total of 23. Boliden says finishing the Kevitsa expansion would cut emissions there by 15% over the life of the mine.

Fortescue built its own truck instead of converting one

Fortescue designed, built and trialled its own 240 tonne battery electric haul truck, rather than converting a diesel one, and the truck is now entering service at its iron ore operations in the Pilbara region of Australia. It recharges in under 30 minutes from a 6 megawatt charger, a charger that delivers 6 million watts of power. Fortescue also has a companywide goal, for 2030, to remove more than 800 diesel powered machines and stop burning almost 1,000,000,000 litres of diesel every year, a target that covers haul trucks, excavators, locomotives and support equipment together, not haul trucks alone.

The diesel a machine saves depends entirely on the mine

No single litres per truck per year figure applies everywhere. Aitik saves diesel a single 700 metre crossing at a time. Yimin replaced an entire diesel fleet at once. Fortescue is still building toward a fleet wide target. The technology works at each of those scales, and what it saves depends on the mine it works in.