Mining is heavy business, and so is this giant Komatsu excavator. It weighs two million pounds, but comes standard with fully-electric drive mode, allowing even the world’s largest mining operations to suddenly zero-out emissions from excavation vehicles. The PC9000-12 is the largest excavator Komatsu has ever built. It can move 80 tons with a single movement of its giant scoop, and having undergone successful testing at Suncor Mining’s Alberta sand mine, it’s now ready for order and delivery around the world. The behemoth’s party trick is that you can plug it in like you’d plug in and use a vacuum, only you need grid-scale power rather than a home electrical outlet. Once it is plugged it, a face-frying 4 megawatts of power are drawn into two electrical motors that crank out the equivalent of 5,300 horsepower. Imagine how much diesel it would use to get that truck from the bottom of a hole to the top eight times a day. Now imagine how much that diesel would cost with the recent disruption in worldwide diesel production and refining from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The PC9000-12 doesn’t have to worry about any of that.
