China’s Tonly, or to give it its full name, Shaanxi Tonly Heavy Industries Co Ltd, is a globally important mining truck manufacturer based in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. Shaanxi Tonly is listed on the Beijing Stock Exchange, where it has been one of the best performers, then has a number of subsidiary companies – the Shaanxi Tonly Xianyang Branch for manufacturing plus a specific company for new energy – Shaanxi Tonly New Energy Intelligent Technology; and for digital innovation Xi’an Tonly Cloud Digital Technology. The global business is centred on Tonly Heavy Industries (Singapore) Pte Ltd with Tonly in Xi’an handling the aftermarket and service for the China market.
The company is relatively young at 21 years old, and is a specialist in the manufacture of wide body dump trucks including the hybrid DTH145 and battery DTE145, both with 91 t payload. While today it is one of a large group of companies supplying these designs – it alone holds the accolade of inventing the concept and introducing it to the market – first in China and then to the rest of the world. Today, despite fierce competition from the likes of SANY, XCMG, LGMG and others, it says it remains the market leader in terms of annual sales and installed base. IM Editorial Director Paul Moore spent a day at the factory last year and met with some of the management team including Lewis Yang, Vice General Manager and Charles Wang, Overseas Sales Manager.
The wide body truck is now taking the world by storm – and is arguably one of the most significant market shifts ever in mine fleet haulage; even more so when you consider the fact that increasingly these trucks are being delivered with new energy powertrains and autonomy systems ready to go. Especially in markets like Brazil, major African mining nations and SE Asia, wide body trucks today are achieving large scale replacement of smaller rigid mining trucks and on-road dump trucks – just as they have previously done in China itself.
IM Editorial Director, Paul Moore with Tonly autonomous new energy wide body trucks at the factory in Xi’an
One criticism of wide body trucks is that they are just throwaway products – while early models were often treated in this way – today as a basic rule, simpler design, lower cost and lower payload models of wide body trucks are designed for a five year life with larger, more complex and higher payload trucks such as the Tonly DTE145 and DTH145 designed to last for eight years or more. It is also not the case that wide body trucks never undergo rebuilds – as they have achieved greater size and longevity, this is increasingly common.
There is also a feeling that most wide body trucks are used in coal only – again, there may have been some truth in this, but the market is also fast diversifying. In the early days of wide body truck development, coal mines accounted for as much as 80% of more of Tonly’s total sales, but today this has fallen to 50%. Wide body trucks are today widely used in metallic mines, sand & gravel and aggregate quarries, large scale construction projects, underground mining operations, cement operations, ports and other related industries.
While it is true that companies like XCMG and SANY are much larger than Tonly and are able to supply many types of equipment – Tonly says it remains the leader in wide body mining truck sales. The Chinese government via the Ministry of Industry also encourages companies to be very dedicated to a certain sector and Tonly has won a special award on two occasions for being a manufacturing individual champion f in relation to wide body mining trucks from 30-90 t. It also has a China Construction Machinery Association Award for its industry contribution with wide body trucks.
From two units a year to 7,000 a year
Back in 2004, Tonly’s 30 t payload 6×4 TL3400 was developed – this was the original wide body type mining truck, opening up it says a new era of bulk haulage in mining. But the uptick in growth took time. That year only two units were built. Up to that point, the Chinese market was divided into the large, mainly coal and copper mines, that were using 100 t plus class rigid trucks from Caterpillar, Komatsu, XEMC, XCMG, Terex/NHL and a few others while the smaller mines using either smaller 90-100 t class rigid trucks, mainly from Terex/NHL or low capacity on-road trucks with 10-15 t payload. In particular, when compared with on-road dump trucks, the new wide body trucks brought greater engine power and torque – allowing them to better handle long loaded climbs, for example. The name wide body came from the fact that traditional onroad dump trucks had a maximum body width of about 2.3 m – whereas the new Tonly trucks extended this to more than 3 m. This not only accommodated a higher payload but also offered more stability on uneven mine roads. The term rigid truck relates to their rigid frame, which takes a lot of the punishment in use – but in challenging conditions this can lead to problems including cracks due to torsion later in the truck’s life. By contrast, the wide body truck has a flexible frame and suspension to allow forces to be more easily absorbed.
This first truck only hit the market in 2006/2007 in Inner Mongolia (200 wide-body vehicles were delivered to the Shenhua Wujiata mine) after achieving the required construction machinery certifications – and thereafter growth at Tonly was very rapid – in 2009 its Xianyang Industrial Park was completed and put into operation with an initial production capacity of 1,600 units, which increased to 2,400 units in Phase II. Already by July 2011, Tonly had produced its 5,000th truck and by 2013 its wide body truck was already into its third generation with key products including the TL855 and TLD50 and the company had also already introduced automatic transmissions. It is worth bearing in mind that at this point, Tonly still had virtually no competitors in the wide body truck space – it was only in the subsequent years that a huge range of similar trucks appeared from other OEMs.
These and subsequent products have all been based on the same fundamental 6 x 4 design. Tonly has also developed a number of ancillary truck types such as water sprinklers and fuel trucks for mining based on the same chassis type. In 2015, the payload increased to 60 t with fourth generation models. In export terms, 2016 was an important year when 126 diesel units, mainly the 60 t TL875, were exported to the Thar Coal Power Project in Pakistan, with Tonly subsidiary Xi’an Tonly operating as the general contractor, pioneering a model of product export combined with general contracting. Today the fleet stands at over 500 units. The Thar coal mine today is also operating battery Tonly trucks – the TLE105.
The year 2015 was also a key date in its electric powertrain development when it produced its first all-electric truck, the TL853, equipped with a lithium titanate battery – while today’s electric trucks all use LFP batteries. Growth continued in 2020 when it began construction of the Xipo Construction Base and R&D Centre, where large scale assembly line production is now centred - increasing annual production capacity when it opened in 2022 to 10,000 truck units, from the previous 1,600 achieved in the original factory in 2009. Actual sales today stand at over 7,000 units per year. The original factory was then repurposed to start production of new energy trucks as well as warehousing space for components.
Components and design features
All the core components used in Tonly trucks are developed and manufactured in-house, but engines, transmissions and axles are outsourced. Engines are mainly from Weichai but also Yuchai and Cummins, with transmissions from Chinese companies like Shaanxi Fast Gear and Xi’an FC Intelligence Transmission but also Allison 4800 WBD transmissions as an option for global customers. The main axle supplier is Shaanxi Hande AXLE. For new energy trucks, most of the batteries are from CATL with electric wheel motors from Suzhou LEOG.
These CATL batteries (up to 1200 kWh in the DTE145) have a maximum continuous charge/discharge rate of 3C, shortening the charging time by about 30% for the same energy capacity. The batteries’ protection level reaches IP68. It is equipped with liquid cooling, liquid heating and a heat insulation system, meeting the requirements for various regions. In hybrid models like the DTH145, when the vehicle is going uphill, the engine operates within an optimal economic rotating speed to generate and supply power continuously; when the vehicle is going downhill, the battery can recover the energy, saving over 10% energy compared with the traditional fuel-powered vehicles.
The manufacturing workforce number about 300 – which is a small number for such a large output – overall Tonly only employs around 1,000 people – but with an annual revenue of around US$1 billion that means translates to an impressive US$1 million per worker. The company has invested heavily in the latest robotic and digitised machining and welding equipment over the years to be able to achieve and maintain its current capacity.
Customisation, maintenance and reman
Tonly told IM that customers appreciate its trucks for the reliability and stability of the design in areas like the chassis and suspension – and as a result it says maintenance downtime is often lower than for other wide body truck brands. A second point made was its willingness and ability to customise trucks for individual customer needs.
A criticism thrown at Chinese OEMs in the past is that they deliver only an off the shelf basic product, with little to no aftersales service or support. Tonly told IM that in fact one of its strengths is its ability to make truck modifications according to customers’ specific needs, such as changing the driver’s cab from left to right side for overseas customers, plus adding accessories such as maintenance-free batteries for hybrid and BEV models (optional for cold regions to increase battery capacity and prevent power loss), hydraulic retarders and brake water sprinklers for heavy-duty downhill conditions, extended eaves for dump bodies, fuel tank protection rails, and a 360° panoramic camera system.
Plug in charging of Tonly battery wide body truck at SECMC operations, Pakistan
It also offers a remanufacturing option for second-hand trucks, where it will completely disassemble the vehicle, inspect and repair every part, replace key components with new ones, and repaint, ensuring the safety performance meeting new vehicle standards. It also offers battery conversions of diesel trucks, which is a fast-growing market in China.
In that way, it says the overall quality of the remanufactured trucks reaches over 90% of the standard for new truck quality, reducing maintenance costs by 50-60%. It also issues equipment certificates and provides the relative warranty (three months or 1,500 hours, whichever comes first).
Tonly also provides comprehensive maintenance solutions for clients, including driver operation training, daily vehicle inspection, maintenance, parts and consumables procurement and storage, and maintenance team formation and management. The service is based on various factors, such as the natural environment, project volume, road conditions (distance, slope, etc) within the mining area, material types, and equipment conditions.
Key components of the Tonly solution
While there is a lot of variation between truck types and sizes, the overall design is quite consistent. The chassis frame is made of high-strength steel plate strengthened through multiple rolls, and bringing high payload bearing capacity, strong impact resistance and long service life. The smaller trucks have a bolted frame with larger models of 70 t class and above having a welded frame due to greater forces experienced. The integrally framed dump body is made of high-strength and wear-resistant steel plate, with strong resistance to impact and deformation, good wear resistance and long service life. A mining-purpose hydraulic oil cylinder for dump body lifting Tonly says offers high capacity plus efficiency, safety and reliability.
For smaller trucks, a sliding-type front suspension with twin shock absorber has higher bearing capacity, good buffer performance and high reliability. A leaf spring balance rear suspension is equipped with dual V-shaped track bar guiding mechanism.
For larger trucks, a fully oil-gas suspension system was independently developed. The front suspension adopts a longitudinal and transverse thrust rod combined with a single-sided oil-gas suspension. The rear suspension optimises an A-frame with coupled single-sided oil-gas suspension in the rear middle. The stiffness and damping of the fully oil-gas suspension is optimised through dynamic analysis of the complete vehicle.
The cab door is opened backwards, allowing the operator to escape the cab quickly in case of accidents; plus the front windshield is forward-tilted to provide a better view and effectively prevent falling objects from smashing the glass and causing damage to the operator.
Tonly mining dump trucks feature a diesel engine + generator range extender system, providing high engine and generator efficiency along with impressive range-extension capability. Thanks to the wide availability of low cost electric power in some mining regions, compared to conventional fuel dump trucks of the same tonnage, its electric mining dump trucks save 15%-20% on overall fuel costs. Powered by dual drive motors, these electric mining trucks Tonly says excel in grade ability and high transportation efficiency.
Owing to their AMT transmission and dual motor-assisted shifting strategy, the larger trucks can achieve automatic shifting without power interruption. For manual transmission models, a mining transmission, with single box and dual intermediate shaft, was jointly developed by Tonly and FAST. This is equipped with a forced lubrication device, presenting strong torque transmission capacity and high reliability. An optional integrated hydraulic retarder can reduce the consumption of brake shoes and improve the safety of the vehicle.
The conventional air brake with electric feedback braking system Tonly says makes its dump trucks safe and reliable. When going downhill with an empty or loaded truck, the electric feedback braking automatically engages once the accelerator pedal is released, converting kinetic energy into electrical energy stored in the battery. This reduces the frequency of mechanical brake use, preventing heat fade and ensuring driving safety.
The fully hydraulic steering and emergency steering system is a specially designed system that ensures the reliability, flexible operation, and responsiveness of the steering system. The hydraulic system includes a high-pressure filtration system to ensure clean priority valve and steering gear, greatly improving system reliability. The emergency steering unit provides short-term steering function in emergencies, greatly ensuring driver’s safety.
The entire truck is designed with a drive-by-wire system, with reserved interfaces for unmanned driving, allowing direct connection to autonomous driving systems – Tonly has worked already with most of the main players including EACON, CiDi, Huawei and others.
Digitally connected with TIMS
Most Tonly trucks are now also connected to a cloud-based digital monitoring system called TIMS 4.0 (Tonly Intelligent Mining System) this is part of a focus to supply a full solution to customers beyond just the trucks. Using TIMS, Tonly can monitor all of its trucks that have a GPS connection – so it can monitor operational performance, fuel consumption, speed, operator behaviour, mileage and key component health including batteries on the hybrid and electric trucks. This allows cross comparison for example of fuel consumption and mileage between different trucks of the same model in the customer fleet. If the fleet is using TPMS then the tyre data can also be shown on the TIMS dashboard. And it is possible to access past data from the truck operation which is recorded and stored. Tonly works closely with the customer management team on how they want the data presented.
Market discussion and analysis
Tonly has already been successful with hybrids and BEVs in China, but why was growth so fast and how does Tonly see the appetite for new energy wide body trucks in the rest of the world?
Lewis Yang told IM: “Within China, the Chinese government has set 2030 and 2060 carbon emission targets, which is a mandatory requirement for all of the OEMs. This dual carbon goal peaking its carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. So at Tonly this was one reason that we initially began to develop our hybrid and all electric trucks. We have achieved a lot of success in China but we quickly realised that globally, miners have such requirements as well.”
Lewis Yang, Tonly Vice General Manager with Paul Moore, IM Editorial Director
To date Tonly has already deployed its all electric or hybrid trucks at scale – including 62 hybrid and 50 battery units to Peru and a large fleet of all electric trucks to Serbia just as examples. Yang: “So already our green powertrain products have shown they can perform outside of China and they continue to gain popularity. But it is important to remember that Tonly was already an important supplier globally of diesel wide body trucks, so this was just the next logical step.”
Its project with Rio Tinto at Oyu Tolgoi is probably its most high profile to date, as it involves a Tier 1 miner and not only that battery swapping technology. What is Rio Tinto seeking to learn and achieve?
Yang: “Rio Tinto also have emissions targets they are aiming for, including a 50% reduction in net Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 relative to 2018 levels. So cooperating with Tonly is just one of their strategies to reduce emissions And ultimately, as they are looking to rely on green power such as solar and wind power, given that electricity can be generated and then stored in batteries with the batteries charged and transferred to mining truck via swapping stations, then they can achieve energy circularity.”
Besides ESG targets, Tonly says the global miners it is talking to also want to significantly reduce their costs, as the grade of their remaining reserves has gotten lower and lower, so they have to remain competitive. Many Chinese mining companies have already faced up to this challenge.
Yang: “One way is to reduce dependence on ultra class trucks which have a very high initial cost, with very high lifecycle costs related to maintenance and parts, including tyres, engines, frames etc – with multiple rebuilds only going a part of the way to address this. So Rio Tinto, and others, are looking to potentially in the future reduce their truck payload, but to do it on a gradual basis, starting with less critical fleets such as those handling tailings or waste – or deploying them in smaller satellite pits.”
Wang added that this actually mirrors Tonly’s mission and vision as well – as it wants to help mining customers reduce costs by providing a combination of robust mid-size class wide body mining trucks, with a full range of powertrain options, and with factory fitted flexible AHS. Lewis Yang then told IM: “The price of a 200 t class rigid truck is typically five times that of a 100 t class Tonly wide body truck. And the TCO of the Tonly truck can be as little as 30% of the large rigid. And then taking into account labour costs in countries like Australia, moving away from full stack AHS tied to the OEM to more flexible and OEM agnostic autonomy also means a huge cost benefit.”
He also argued that for companies like Komatsu and Caterpillar – their low emissions models will come with a significant cost increase on top of the initial cost gap with wide body trucks already mentioned – and while mining groups want greener fleets, they are not willing to sacrifice profitability to achieve it. As Chinese OEMs are already widely experienced with all electric and hybrid models – having produced them in large numbers - they are able to offer them as both a low cost and low emission solution. Yang: “This is a really important difference between Chinese and Western OEMs, and we believe it will continue to facilitate and boost the adoption of wide body trucks worldwide – as it helps the miners to achieve their ESG targets while reducing their costs at the same time.”
Battery swapping of Tonly wide body truck at Rio Tinto’s Oyu Tolgoi
Today one of its flagship and most important models, the 91 t class Tonly DTE145 is described as a strategic product in response to the green transformation needs of large mines. It uses a 620 kW dual-motor power system, with an output torque increase of 35% compared to traditional fuel engines. Equipped with a smart transmission, the vehicle can ensure continuous and smooth power even in the face of complex ramps;At the same time, the power battery uses a liquid cooling heat management system, which can operate steadily in an environment of -35°C to 45°C, making it suitable for the tropical climate of Simandou.
Does Tonly think the market outside of China will initially develop where operators will have a rigid fleet for prime ore and waste haulage and a wide body fleet for earthmoving and infrastructure? Yang: “For Rio Tinto, currently it’s just a trial with a small fleet because it’s a new thing for them – they have never tried using wide body dump trucks. But eventually, Tonly sees major miners outside of China using its wide body trucks to cover all mining scenarios, just as they are inside China. This includes ore and overburden haulage as well as earthmoving.”
In more detail, where does they see the current major demand and what is their current focus and strategy for sales of their battery and hybrid trucks. “First all, emissions reduction targets are very important for all mining groups everywhere. But we do think that there are some priority markets, like South Africa, North and South America and Australia. Because these areas are abundant in mineral resources, plus their mining industries are mature and well developed. So they have a large potential demand for these new types of trucks and they also have a limited window to meet their emissions targets.”
Charles Wang also mentioned Europe as a growing potential market, especially for mid-sized miners and major quarry operators – with a lot of interest currently in Eastern Europe and Turkey. Turkey has already given a CE mark to Tonly’s battery 80 t truck, the TLE120 which is being offered both directly and through dealers like Labris Maden. In Serbia, Tonly has already supplied a fleet of battery TLE105 70 t trucks to Zijin Mining’s Novo Cerovo copper mine. Testing of Tonly trucks will test in Poland and the Czech Republic at quarrying operations.
Talking about Africa, there is a lot of potential outside of South Africa in the more developed mining countries such as Zambia, Mali, the DRC and Ghana, where both Chinese and Western miners have made large investments and are also looking to reduce emissions. In that regard, obviously, a lot of potential for Tonly comes with working closely with the big Chinese mining groups that are increasing investments globally, particularly Zijin Mining – which has brought Tonly electric trucks to Serbia as mentioned but also Peru to its La Arena mine. In Africa, Zijin operates the Aykem gold mine in Ghana and the Kolwezi copper mine in DRC.
From January to April 2025, BEV mining trucks accounted for about 52% of Tonly’s sales revenue, which is a significant figure as for most of other OEMs, the percentage is roughly 20%.
In Singapore, Tonly has also set up a new overseas sales HQ – Tonly Singapore – which was set up in 2023 with a registered capital of RMB 200 million. It serves as a global hub for the global business including sales, funding and aftermarket services and also acts as a global product R&D centre for the global operations, working closely with the home R&D team in Xi’an. With Singapore being one of the top five world financial centres, the move will also help drive investment in Tonly as a business as well.
Tonly’s target is actually to the target is to have 50% of its sales revenue from outside of China by 2030 – currently it is about 20%. It has more than 30 global dealers and also it has successfully exported mining trucks to more than 50 countries. Most of this to date in quantity terms has been diesel trucks to developing markets in Africa, SE Asia and South America. As already discussed these are also important markets for new energy products but now Tonly is also targeting more developed markets like Australia, Europe, and North America in the next two to three years.
The autonomy factor
Moving to autonomy – Tonly has worked closely with EACON in recent years including using its AHS as a factory fitted solution and worked together on the ET100 autonomous hybrid mining truck; as well as more recently the EQ100E, a distributed drive, all battery electric, autonomous and cabless mining truck. Do they think that being able to offer an OEM agnostic autonomy together with EACON will also be a factor in Tonly reaching its overseas growth targets? Yang: “Absolutely – we have great confidence both in EACON’s autonomous haulage technology and also in EACON as a company. Safety is the first priority and also at the same time one of the greatest challenges for all the big miners globally, and that means we want to help better manage how people work and where possible minimise the human presence in active mining areas. Actually, China is leading the way in the world in this – in terms of achieving fully autonomous operations, China is progressing faster than any other region. Solutions provided by high tech companies like EACON are actually not only more advanced but also more cost effective than existing full stack AHS used by many Western miners today – and for them lowering costs is very important. And the market has matured to such an extent in China that almost all the autonomous trucks today are supplied with all the sensors and systems factory fitted – not retrofitted – this is also a saving for us and for the customer.”
The all electric, cabless and autonomous EQ100E, developed by Tonly and EACON
During IM’s visit, 91 t class hybrid trucks were being manufactured with EACON’s system installed in-factory - the TLH135. When AHS in China was first introduced, most companies ran wide body trucks conventionally for a year or two before trying out autonomy by retrofit as they needed to be convinced of the upside. Today, shipping trucks ready to start autonomous operations as soon as they arrive is the norm. In addition, EACON itself began by retaining ownership of trucks and offering an autonomy as a service business model – again due to initial scepticism about AHS performance. While this setup is still use at some mines, today the norm is for the customer or mining contractor to own the trucks, with EACON supplying the AHS technology and software.
Yang also pointed out that if trucks are controlled by the AHS instead of by a human, maintenance costs are reduced as the system follows certain standards and rules to control the trucks – so wear is often slower and more predictable than with human operators with very varied driving behaviours. And this has been shown from large Tonly fleets operating in Xinjiang.
Of course many big mines like Rio Tinto and BHP have already been using AHS in the Pilbara for many years – as far back as 2008 for Rio. And they are now seeing the efficiency benefits – but these full stack systems were expensive and time consuming to deploy and refine. Wang sees the next evolution in Australia being both adoption of new energy equipment but at the same time investing in new OEM agnostic autonomy – something EACON is already working with Australian customers on. And it remains the case that there are significantly more autonomous mining trucks operating in China and the whole of the rest of the world combined. And if you then also confine it to new energy autonomous trucks, the contrast is even greater.
In 2025 the number of autonomous trucks running in China passed 3,000 units – and is now about double the rest of the world at about 1,600. Tonly alone says it has around 1,500 autonomous trucks operating – so accounts for about half of those running in China, with the rest mainly LGMG, Yutong, SANY and XCMG.
The market is growing exponentially in China, so this gap is already widening even more. Tonly says the big Western miners have noticed this and that it has had conversations with Rio Tinto and others about nextgen AHS.
Rio Tinto partnership
The trial with Tonly potentially has global importance as it is Rio Tinto’s first use of battery swap electric haul trucks in surface mining operations. It sees this as a major step towards developing the cost-effective technology and operational learnings required to reduce emissions from mining haulage fleets – one of the largest contributors to the company’s Scope 1 and 2 carbon footprint. It involves a fleet of eight 91 t Tonly trucks, together with 13 batteries (each 800 kWh), a battery swapping station, static charger, and supporting infrastructure. The equipment will be tested through to the end of 2026 and will help Rio Tinto identify opportunities for wider adoption of this low emission technology across the company. Rio Tinto’s global fleet of 700 haul trucks includes about 100 small or medium class (100-200t payload) vehicles, offering the potential to adopt current-generation battery swap technology.
But of course companies like Rio Tinto set a very high bar in terms of requirements. Wang: ”For this project Rio Tinto has required Tonly to meet very strict standards - their requirements have been well above Chinese and even above most international standards. Working with them we have made over 500 design adjustments to the trucks to comply. This level of partnership is significant, as Rio Tinto are effectively defining how they want their own new energy product to be by proposing their own standards, so that they end up with a solution developed by us based on what is required by them.”
Yang added: “From our side we have the most experience globally with battery swapping systems and are the market leader in wide body trucks in general. We have learned and are learning from each other. In the past sometimes satisfying ESG targets and lowering costs have been seen as conflicting aims. However, we and they are trying to find solutions to achieve both at the same time. And one reason this is possible is what has been done within China already.”
Now that these trucks meet Rio Tinto standards there is also the potential for them to be used in Australia both at Rio Tinto’s own operations and at other sites. The last three trucks of the fleet of eight were being completed during IM’s visit.
Currently, Tonly’s battery swapping stations allow for a battery change in about six to seven minutes and have been developed technology developed by specialist power companies – the Oyu Tolgoi project for example was delivered with Qiyuan Green Power (part of SPIC), with whom Tonly has also worked at other sites including Anshan Iron and Steel’s Benxi mine with the TLE135 truck.
The company explained that the trade off today for battery swap or plug in charging is related to the available power and power infrastructure – if there is already an extensive mine wide infrastructure in place, especially if the mine has excess power from associated solar and wind farms (which is very common in Chinese coal operations) then plug in charging is usually still the more economic option compared to the cost of installing battery swap capability as the swapping stations themselves are relatively speaking still very costly.
That said, many of the mines in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang and other regions where all electric trucks are being used are very remote so the battery swapping capability is today very attractive. Aside from the battery swap system and eight trucks for Rio Tinto at Oyu Tolgoi, all of the electric Tonly fleets supplied today to Zijin Mining are with battery swapping stations, including for La Arena in Peru.
The all new Tonly TED136 combines the best of wide body and rigid mining truck design
Tonly’s TED136 – bringing the best of both worlds
The very latest development at Tonly is a truck that it says combines the best of wide body and rigid mining truck design. Designed to carry 120 t (136 ton), when compared to industry benchmarks like the Komatsu HD1500 and Caterpillar 785, Tonly says the TED136 strikes a remarkable balance between performance and sustainability. Powered by a Weichai 12-cylinder high-pressure common rail engine delivering 900 kW, and supported by twin 500 kW traction motors, its electric drive system boasts a total output of 1,000 kW. “The response is smooth and immediate, even under heavy loads. Its electric braking system offers up to 1,800 kW of maximum braking power, with continuous braking at 1,400 kW – matching the efficiency and control of established global models.”
But where Tonly says the TED136 truly shines is in its low-carbon design. “The electric drive system allows the engine to operate consistently within its most efficient range, significantly reducing fuel consumption and emissions. In challenging mining environments with frequent starts, stops, and steep grades, it outperforms traditional mechanical drives in energy efficiency. Optional features like coolant heating and intelligent energy management further optimise performance in cold climates and varying conditions, ensuring every drop of fuel is used wisely.”
Inside the cab, noise levels are kept below 80 dB, and the full hydraulic-pneumatic suspension ensures a smooth ride even on rough terrain. The U-shaped body allows for clean, efficient dumping, while high-strength steel construction enhances durability and impact resistance. Safety is also a priority, with an automatic fire suppression system, multiple braking modes, and robust structural protection.
The TED136 is currently at customer sites for testing and will be available commercially in 2027. On the hybrid side, with larger trucks, the TLDH180 hybrid mining truck is another recent addition – with a 110 t payload and advanced hybrid powertrain. The TLDH180 is expected to be available in the overseas market this year.
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