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Comment by stefs | Hacker News Reader

i thought many of those haulers were electric; (just with on-board diesel generators) due to torque on the one hand and the ability to recharge the batteries when fully loaded on the way down enough to let them drive back up without additional recharging (at least with quarries in mountains).

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I would guess this as well. There are plenty of working examples for conveyors. "Since it is downhill conveying, the system generates more than 100 million kilowatt-hours per year at a load of 11.000 t/h. The disk breaks have a diameter of 2,5 m. The length of the 3-part system is 12.700 m. Almost the complete belt is operating in tunnels to protect it from the danger of avalanches in the Andes." https://conveyorbeltguide.com/examples-of-use.html

You'd still need an insanely large battery to move 240 tons, wouldn't you? I can't find any info on the battery capacity of this specimen.

yeah I wonder how many of those 240 tons ARE the battery!

None? That 240 tons is the payload.

Probably less than you'd think. Moving things on wheels is a lot easier than (for example) lifting and, compared to cars, it does not need to accelerate fast or deal with highly varying loads.

There is a train in Australia that carries ore from a mine to a port, fully electric, which never needs external charging - the mine is higher than the port, so the train just charges its internal batteries going down, which is enough to drive it back up to the mine, it's very cool:

The "infinity train" is still under construction.

Due to launch sometime soon in 2024 (as announced in 2022) it's still yet to roll on it's maiden haul.

They are still hiring electrical techs though.

Well weight is 110x normal EV, but range is 30x less. So about 220kwh?

Many of them are. I'm not sure what is newsworthy about this one. Maybe it's the largest Caterpillar has done?

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