Australian mining companies could be hit with a productivity drop of up to 33 percent if they switch to electric trucks, a study has found.
According to the study, recharging an electric truck will take longer than refuelling a diesel one, leading to a 12.5 percent reduction in its availability.
In addition, electric trucks will carry a smaller amount of ore due to the heavy weight of the batteries.
A battery needed for a typical 230-tonne truck would weigh two to three times that of diesel fuel tanks and engines, or simply put, between 12 and 24 tonnes.
As a result, mining companies will suffer from an overall drop in productivity of 19 percent if they use NCA lithium-ion batteries for their vehicles, and a 33 percent drop for LFP lithium-ion batteries.
Miners can reduce productivity losses if they have a system that could swap a fresh battery into a truck when needed rather than fully recharging it.
Idoba estimated that the reduction in productivity would be limited to 11.2-16.4 percent in the above case.
However, the consulting firm warned that such a system would require heavy investments to ensure it could run safely and efficiently.
Meanwhile, the technology required to fully electrify heavy-haul trucks has not matured.
Can Electric Vehicles Really Reduce Carbon Emissions?
The Manhattan Institute has previously released a study saying it was not sure how much carbon emissions would be reduced with a transition from conventional internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles.According to the study, determining carbon emissions and future costs for EVs is dependent on many variables that could lead to numerous uncertainties.
For example, the emissions created by recharging an EV battery could vary depending on the type of energy grid used and hourly variations in electricity production.
“Accounting for those realities, and not a hypothetical average kilowatt-hour, reveals that CO2 emissions per EV fill-up can range from zero to as high as the same as just burning gasoline to drive the same number of miles,” Mark Mills, the study’s author, wrote.
The author also noted that there were “realistic scenarios” in which driving an EV could produce more carbon emissions than a traditional vehicle.
Furthermore, there are a lot of unknowns about the emissions produced in the initial manufacturing of an EV.
The study pointed out that a typical EV battery required a lot of copper, nickel, aluminium, graphite, cobalt, manganese, and lithium and that there was limited data about the emissions produced to obtain these minerals.
“Much of the necessary data may never be collectible in any normal regulatory fashion, given the technical uncertainties and the variety and opacity of geographic factors, as well as the proprietary nature of many of the processes,” Mr. Mills wrote.
