Human driving is doomed to become a career of the past, as several pioneers globally attempt to expand their autonomous transportation solutions. Among them is China’s Eacon Mining Technology, which recently closed a primary investment circular and is now targeting growth.
Eacon Mining Technology announced last week that it had secured $55 million in Series C funding. Richen Capital, a Chinese backer of autonomous technologies, led the round. Other participants included Shenyin.
Eacon is proud to be China’s first autonomous mining company. Founded in 2018 and tested since 2019, Eacon has lately been offering advertising in various mines in China. This includes projects for China Energy Group and TBEA’s South Pit, China’s largest open-pit coal mine. , according to the company.
Since 2022, Eacon has focused on electric and hybrid mining trucks. These included equipping the trucks with a plug-in hybrid electric propulsion formula, as well as “an intelligent whole-vehicle power control formula, a specialized diversity extender formula for heavy-duty mining. “trucks, stressed brakes, and a fully hydraulic braking formula. Controlled guidance formula: According to the company, these trucks can overcome gradients of up to 35% and reach speeds of up to forty-five km/h.
For the large deployment of its technology, Eacon has partnered with truck and excavation apparatus manufacturer LGMG to supply its trucks with electrically operated chassis and autonomous driving solutions. It has also partnered with Yutong Mining Equipment to build electric mining trucks and has delivered several of them. to the Honghe mine as part of a project called “zero carbon mine”. Eacon now operates 304 autonomous trucks that have traveled a total of 4. 2 million miles with a human driver.
Next, Eacon wants to enter the commercialization and scale-up phase. Richen Capital director Tingfu Wang said in a statement that he expects Eacon to “quickly achieve net profitability” following its successful operations at mining sites.
With the new capital, Eacon will improve its operational productivity and invest in the construction of new power systems for mining trucks, according to a statement from the company’s chairman, Lei Zhang. Eacon is also poised to expand overseas and has opened an office in Perth, Australia. Attract customers abroad.
In the United States, Caterpillar is one of the leaders in autonomous transportation. The company uses its Cat® MineStar™ Command to remotely mechanize and automate haul trucks. Recently, Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan will convert the Cat truck fleet at its Baghdad plant. -Arizona copper mine in an autonomous transportation system.
Another top player is Komatsu, having built its autonomous haul truck jointly with Tucson-based mining equipment management systems developer Modular Mining. A fleet of Komatsu’s FrontRunner AHS trucks were set for deployment at Los Bronces, a Chilean open pit copper mine owned by Anglo American, a global mining company. Komatsu’s AHS trucks were first commercialized back in 2008.
Autonomous transport is perceived as a safer way to manage mining operations by moving human operators away from dangerous or remote sites. Caterpillar also announces reduced infrastructure and worker costs, increased power and consistency of operations, reduced downtowns due to holidays and misuse. power power and instant upgrades or a rework of mine maps.
Image: Eacon Mining Technology