EACON autonomy system deployed on new Lovol battery electric and KNOW-HOW methanol truck fleets in Xinjiang
One of the factors behind EACON’s success with its ORCASTRA autonomous haulage technology in the Chinese market is its flexibility in working with a wide range of mine types, truck OEMs and even energy types – while traditionally the majority of its projects have involved OEMs like Tonly Heavy Industries, LGMG, Yutong and XCMG – recent projects with others like Sinotruk, Lovol and KNOW-HOW illustrate its agility. EACON recently passed the milestone of delivering over 3,000 autonomous mining trucks globally.
Looking at two of these OEMs, a groundbreaking ceremony and battery wide body mining truck delivery ceremony at a large open-pit coal mine project in Xinjiang Province was recently held. Lovol Heavy Industry, based in Qingdao and a subsidiary of Shandong Heavy Industry and controlled by Weichai, delivered a fleet of LT130i 90 t class battery electric and autonomous mining trucks, it says helping open-pit mines achieve efficient, safe, and low-carbon mining.
The delivered Lovol LT130i pure electric driverless mining truck is a described as a hardcore truck tailored for harsh working conditions, empowering mines with three core values. First, pure electric power, cost reduction and energy consumption reduction for greener mine operation. Lovol said the fleet is “relying on a mature and reliable three-electric system, zero fuel consumption and zero exhaust emissions, significantly reducing mine operating costs, highly aligning with ‘dual carbon’ goals and green mine construction standards. Large-capacity power batteries meet the demands of high-intensity, uninterrupted transfer in mining areas.”
Second the autonomous driving system strengthens safety and improves transportation efficiency. The trucks are equipped with the easy-control intelligent driving EACON autonomous driving system, relying on four intelligent systems – high-precision drive-by-wire chassis, AI autonomous learning, integrated vehicle control, and vehicle-road collaboration – it enables fully unmanned operations for autonomous loading and unloading, obstacle avoidance, and cloud-based intelligent dispatch. Using AHS reduces the risks of high-risk operations for personnel, intelligently optimises scheduling routes, and improves overall mine transportation efficiency.
Finally, a heavy-duty and robust chassis is able to cope with harsh mining conditions. The body uses a double-layer high-strength main beam frame, offering “outstanding bending and load-bearing capacity.” The trucks also have a reinforced oil-pneumatic suspension and high-strength balance shaft suspension installed front and rear, offering excellent heavy-duty shock absorption and shock resistance. “The entire vehicle structure is sturdy and durable, paired with a thickened wear-resistant truck body, allowing it to handle continuous high-intensity operations in mining areas around the clock, effectively reducing failure rates and ensuring high equipment uptime and extended service life.”
This mining area has already seen large-scale deployment of Lovol MIT100HT, so the stability of driverless dispatch and the energy-saving and consumption-reducing effects of electrification were fully validated by the project team, and Lovol says their reliability and intelligent operation performance received high recognition from customers.
Also in Xinjiang, 20 KNOW-HOW NKH150i driverless methanol range-extended wide-body dump trucks were recently delivered. The truck OEM said that this additional order is in recognition of six months of on-site operation results for the previous vehicles. KNOW-HOW is based in Shuozhou, Shanxi Province with R&D centres in Tianjin, Shenyang and Changzhou.
Methanol powered NKH150i mining truck with EACON autonomy
KNOW-HOW states: “Previously, the mining area had already deployed a large number of NKH150i methanol range-extended autonomous vehicles for regular production and operation. After half a year of harsh conditions such as heavy loads and long ramps in the Gobi mining area, the entire unmanned transportation system is operating stably, with availability of ≥95%. Relying on methanol range-extended powertrain and self-developed drive technology, the vehicle achieves a significant reduction in energy consumption, with a 30% reduction compared to similar vehicles.”
It says it has developed a proprietary methanol range-extended power architecture and ‘Zhichao’ electronic power tracking algorithm for mining under heavy-duty climbing and long-term continuous operation conditions, achieving intelligent power allocation. EACON: “The integration of EACON intelligent driving autonomous driving technology with KNOW-HOW’s new energy mining trucks is accelerating, further expanding the application scenarios of autonomous driving technology in new energy transportation equipment.”
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