Cat® 793 XE Early Learner battery-powered electric trucks are being tested by customers

Posted by Paul Moore on September 22, 2024

Caterpillar announced yesterday that it has reached the next milestone in the development of battery-powered electric trucks, reaffirming its commitment to offering its customers zero-emission solutions.

Caterpillar's next generation of battery-powered large mining trucks has arrived for testing and validation at select customer sites. Caterpillar says it has now completed construction and testing of seven Cat® 793 XE Early Learner battery-powered trucks at its Tucson Proving Ground in Green Valley, Arizona.

This is the second phase of development of the company's Early Learner program following the successful demonstration of the first battery-electric 793 prototype in November 2022. Caterpillar will also continue to test and validate some truck models from the Early Learner program at its proving ground.

The company unveiled one of these next-generation 793 XE trucks to a select group of media representatives yesterday at the Tucson Proving Ground. Caterpillar also unveiled a prototype of the 775 XE, a battery-electric version of the 70.5-ton diesel truck.

Denise Johnson, President of the Caterpillar Group, says: “We have introduced this early learner phase to deliberately send battery-electric trucks to customer sites earlier than we have previously done in our traditional product development process. These early learner machines will be used to refine requirements, develop processes and validate both the machine and technology designs. Testing these trucks at our customers' sites will provide valuable feedback for our battery truck program.”

Caterpillar launched its Early Learner program in 2021 to accelerate the development and validation of large battery-powered Cat mining trucks with support from key mining customers and Cat dealers. The company expanded the Early Learner program to include off-highway trucks to meet growing demand from the quarrying and aggregates industries.

One of the main goals of the program is for Caterpillar to work more closely with its customers to better understand the impact of the energy transition on a mine's people, processes, infrastructure and technology. The Early Learner phase of the program will be critical to experiencing these impacts in real-world environments. It will also be critical to validating the improved design elements of the 793 XE.

Brian Weller, Vice President of Caterpillar, explains: “In less than two years, we have gone from retrofitting an existing machine at our proving grounds to a robust solution ready for testing with our customers. This was no small change. Almost everything about the powertrain has been improved while continuing to use proven components from our Cat 793 model. With these changes, we still have a lot to learn together with our customers in real-world applications.”

The next phase of Caterpillar's Early Learner program will integrate multiple electric trucks at the sites to validate the integration of a battery-powered electric fleet into Caterpillar's autonomous fleet management systems.