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The rate of growth of autonomous driving technology in the Chinese mining industry is nothing short of remarkable – market leader EACON has just announced that it has passed the milestone of 4,000 mining trucks running with its ORCASTRA AHS. Putting this in perspective, this means it has more than double the number of trucks running with its AHS than Caterpillar’s Command for hauling and Komatsu’s FrontRunner combined.
Trucks automated with ORCASTRA increased from 1,000 in 2024 to 2,000 in 2025 to the more than 4,000 in 2026. Over 200 million kilometres of autonomous driving with ORCASTRA have now been completed, with the second 100 million kilometres achieved in just one year, compared with seven years for the first. One single mine – Baishihu – operated by Guanghui Mining, has over 700 EACON ORCASTRA equipped trucks.
EACON states: “This growth is supported by a highly adaptable autonomous haulage solution that integrates across truck manufacturers, powertrains and configurations, through both retrofit and factory-fit. Combined with reduced infrastructure requirements and greater support for mixed-fleet operations, our approach gives mines greater flexibility to scale automation while minimising changes to established operations. It also reflects the continued trust of our customers, collaboration with industry partners and ongoing investment in autonomous technology.”
There are other factors at play as well – much of the rapid growth both of autonomy and green powertrains in China was initially policy-driven in the massive mining hub regions like Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. But today it also reflects the fact that autonomy is now making money for mine operators and contractors – and the contractor market in China is huge and highly competitive; so AHS really gives them an edge. IM Editorial Director Paul Moore witnessed this level of competition at a large mine in northwest China earlier this year – where at a single mine there were four main contractors operating, two in overburden and two in coal – with AHS systems running from three different providers – EACON being the largest but also with sizeable CiDi and Huawei AHS equipped fleets – plus a mix of battery electric and methanol hybrid wide body trucks from Tonly, Sinotruk and XCMG as well as isolated other trucks in testing from other OEMs including Zoomlion and Taiyuan Heavy (TZCO). And this mine is not an isolated example.
The AHS market in China has also moved far beyond retrofits – most trucks today are delivered with the AHS set up having been fitted in-factory to the mine’s or mining contractors specifications, and with close cooperation between the AHS provider and the truck OEM. The charging infrastructure is also well advanced, with a mix of static charging and battery swapping depending on what is economic for that particular site. Cabless trucks are also becoming more common as the level of trust in the AHS performance and safety reaches a high level – the EQ100E battery cabless truck developed by EACON and Tonly is a good example – and IM saw this in action as well.
Looking beyond China, While EACON’s overseas market penetration has so far been relatively limited, the potential for rapid growth is definitely there, once projects like its ORCASTRA trials on six Komatsu HD1500 trucks at Norton Gold Fields’ operations in Western Australia are completed this is likely to change – after all many delegations from the top miners like BHP have been to see the project. Most major mining houses today – BHP and Rio Tinto included, have specific China procurement teams looking at where and how Chinese innovations can benefit their operations.
Just as impressive is the numbers breakdown – of the 4,000 EACON AHS equipped trucks running today, well under 1% are diesel and about 47% are full battery electric with the balance of almost 53% being hybrids. This vast experience in marrying AHS with hybrid and battery electric powertrains is likely to benefit both the likes of EACON, but also its OEM partners like Tonly, LGMG, XCMG and others as they look to scale in the overseas market.
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