EACON autonomous driving systems expand to 10+ Chinese coal mines
EACON says more than 600 trucks running its system work coal faces at over 10 open-pit mines, a step beyond clearing rock.
China's driverless mining trucks got their start on the dirty work: hauling away the rock and soil that sits on top of the coal. Now they also carry the coal itself. EACON (易控智驾), which supplies autonomous-driving systems for mining trucks, said in a Sept. 20 post that more than 600 trucks running its system now haul coal at more than 10 open-pit mines in coal regions such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.
Why is coal harder? The trucks link the coal face with the crushers, so any hold-up cuts the supply of raw coal, and at junctions they mix with human-driven trucks and other mining equipment. At the Shitoumei No. 1 mine in Hami, in eastern Xinjiang, 100 driverless trucks haul coal, EACON says, and some routes climb about 4 km uphill with full loads.
EACON says it ran the industry's first driverless coal-hauling project in 2023; at one large Xinjiang mine, its first 24 trucks started hauling coal that winter among more than 100 human-driven trucks. That mine now runs 111, and EACON says they are as efficient as human drivers.
EACON-enhanced trucks don't only haul coal. In an Oct. 5 update, EACON said its system has been used on more than 3,700 driverless mining trucks in all, including five that have hauled nearly 190,000 metric tons from a coal face at the Zhanihe open-pit mine, working alongside 18 human-driven trucks and three excavators.
Sources: 易控智驾 EACON, 易控智驾 EACON (WeChat), 中证网 China Securities Journal (Xinhua)
Editor: Ian Lamont
