The construction equipment space is seeing renewed interest in the wake of the push towards infrastructure growth and the fund outlay in NEP. The year-on-year volume growth is likely to be around 7 percent in FY2023, as per recent studies. While equipment utilisation levels have moderated somewhat in the latter half, alternative fuel and sustainability continue to be the top drivers. Terex, a key player in this space, is betting on hybrids to lead the growth trend.
According to Jaideep Shekhar, Managing Director – Terex India “the first step of electrification, which a lot of the companies have gone into, including Terex, is hybrid technology. It’s easy to electrify a small car or a small telehandler, which can run on the battery, But when you’re talking about large mining machines, the battery technology is going to take some time for it to come and be fully electric and that’s the reason I think the first step into journey is the hybrid technology, which significantly reduces your fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, it also gives the customers the option to kind of run the plant on the EB power.
Terex Corporation has invested in a couple of tech companies in the US who are at the forefront of battery technology and electrification. The interesting thing about batteries in the construction equipment industry is that you really need huge batteries if you have to run some of these large mining and construction machines again depending upon the usage.
Shekhar added that “It may be easier to have a battery powered machine on a telehandler because it has to work for a couple of hours a day. But we are talking about crushers and all our large cranes. I think you know you are now probably couple of years away from it. “
Not just the automotive industry in general but even the construction equipment industry, in particular, is very wide and one option will not suit every single type of your machine. “Hence in the industry you will see various machines at various stages of electrification or battery technology. The easiest ones are going to be something related to EV, which is like battery operated dumper trucks, you’ll see probably battery operated telehandlers from small cranes. But as you move to larger and bigger machines, I think that technology is still evolving and I think hybrid is the answer for now, which we are anyways into it full time,” signed off Shekhar.