Electric machines in underground mining.

A change in the resource extraction paradigm.

The Canadian company Eodorado Gold announced that it will replace part of its underground fleet with 50-ton fully electric trucks developed by the Swedish company Sandvik. The vehicles called TH550B will be deployed at the Lamaque gold mine in Quebec with first deliveries scheduled for 2026.

Each truck is capable of transporting up to 50 tons of material, reaching about 37 km per hour in underground tunnels and operating for hours using large lithium iron phosphate batteries, a more stable type of battery with a lower risk of fire, something critical in closed environments, but the most impressive detail is not only that they are electric, it is the way in which they continue to work.

When the battery runs out, the truck does not need to wait hours to recharge, it goes alone to an automatic station where a robotic system removes the discharged battery, installs another fully charged one, the whole process takes just a few minutes, that simple change profoundly alters the logic of underground mining.

Diesel trucks release toxic gases, excessive heat and require gigantic ventilation systems to keep the air breathable. In deep mines, ventilation is one of the largest operating costs. By eliminating combustion engines, the mine generates less heat, less pollution and less noise. This drastically reduces the need for forced ventilation.

Already inside the mines it means safer, quieter and more efficient mines and there is a powerful collateral effect, if mining becomes cleaner and more efficient, it becomes viable to explore greater depths without multiplying infrastructure costs, this expands access to mineral deposits that were previously economically unviable and many of these minerals are precisely those that fuel the energy transition, Lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt, rare earths. That is, electric vehicles are being used to extract the materials that make other electric vehicles possible, it is a cycle.