Volvo CE pilots sustainable solutions

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Company says its sustainable product development centers around customer feedback and needs

Scott Young has been on the frontlines of the electrification journey at Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE) for roughly a decade, having led a team that went on to present some of its first electric, and autonomous, concepts to the market at the company’s Xploration Forum in Eskilstuna, Sweden, in September 2016. He has since risen through the corporate ranks, and in September 2023 was named president of Region North America.

Scott Young, president of Region North America, Volvo Construction Equipment. (Photo: Becky Schultz)

Looking back at the company’s sustainability path, Young said events like the Xploration Forum have served as milestones in bringing customers along in the company’s product development journey. Volvo CE has worked with customers on various pilot programs throughout its product development cycle, ranging from the Electric Site project with construction giant Skanska, completed in 2018, to more current projects such as piloting of the EC230 Electric excavator by Waste Management and Skanska in 2023 and 2024.

In each case, customer feedback – from operators, technicians, fleet managers, operations managers and others – has been collected and brought back into the solution, said Young, to help the machines evolve from the pilot stage to the point of being released to the market.

“Those pilot examples that we’ve done in the industry have brought us close to some of those key customers – working with customers that want to be on the front end of this so that we can then evolve [products] into the machines that you see out there,” he said of the lineup featured at Volvo Days, held in Shippensburg, Penn., in September 2024.

“What we want to do, by driving the industry forward, is have cutting edge products, making sure that we’re continuing to push the envelope, but do this responsibly, so that we have uptime and productivity,” he emphasized. “When we do this development work, we really work to develop so that we have our customer in mind.”

From concept to production

One example previewed at Volvo Days was the L120 Electric, a 22-ton fully electric wheel loader. The full-size model is yet another step in the company’s electrification journey.

Volvo L120 Electric wheel loader The L120 Electric full-size wheel loader represents another step in Volvo CE’s electrification journey. (Photo: Volvo Construction Equipment)

“Obviously, we found that on the smaller equipment, it made a lot of sense to go electric,” said Young. “I think a lot of people confine [electromobility] to ‘That works for compact machines, but that’s not high production or that might be a lower utilization.’ When we start to get into the general-purpose equipment, this is where people start to say, ‘Okay, well, how long is it going to last,’ and so forth.”

According to Volvo CE, the L120 Electric offers nearly identical performance capabilities to its diesel counterpart. Powered by a 600 V, 282-kWh lithium-ion battery system with rated power of 230 kW, it is capable of delivering a runtime of between five and nine hours, depending on the application.

Young sees commercial availability of the full-size electric loader in the first half of 2025 – and an updated version of the already available EC230 Electric excavator in the early part of the year – as a tribute to how far technology development has come, as well as to what is now possible on modern jobsites.

“This is where we’ve been able to take this journey that we’ve been on from the Electric Site years ago,” said Young. “As the technology develops, we start to see that we get better autonomy, we get better efficiency, and we get better production out of those machines.”

Further leveraging e-mobility

Volvo CE is also exploring opportunities to leverage the electromobility platform proven in its compact equipment into other machine types, such as compactors.

Volvo DD15 Electric compactor The 1.5-ton DD15 Electric compactor is similar to the currently available DD25 but in a smaller size class. (Photo: Becky Schultz)

“We think it’s a great fit for compaction… When they’re on a jobsite, they’re sitting there typically 60%, 70% of the time,” said Justin Zupanc, compaction product manager, Volvo CE. “When you have battery technology, there is no idle time. The machine is essentially going to ‘sleep’ whenever you’re not actively using it. So, your power draw, it’s not zero, but it’s negligible.”

At Volvo Days, alongside a production model DD25 electric vibratory roller, the company featured two early “first look” concepts – the DD15 Electric vibratory roller and TC13 Electric trench compactor. By sharing proven technologies (batteries, electric motors, etc.) from Volvo’s electric compact excavators and wheel loaders, product development was able to focus on what’s unique to asphalt equipment – vibration.

That includes insuring against vibration-induced failures on battery packs. “We spent a lot of time designing rigid structures, putting isolators in and making sure that it’s really going to live for what the expected lifetime of the machine will be,” Zupanc said.

“It was [both] physical testing as well as virtual analysis. Our engineering team spent a lot of time designing and testing and analyzing and adapting based on what they were seeing,” he explained. “We wanted to make sure that we understood what the limits were on the battery packs themselves, and then we could make sure that whatever that structure is stays well within those limits.”

Volvo TC-13 Electric trench compacto The “first-look” Volvo TC-13 Electric trench compactor offers two-way charging capability, enabling it to power other tools when not in use. (Photo: Becky Schultz)

While the 1.5-ton DD15 Electric is similar to the DD25, just in a smaller size class, the TC13 Electric is unique and not just because it’s a trench compactor and is battery electric.

“The real novel part isn’t so much the battery, it’s that we now have two-way charging on that unit. We’ve added 120 V and 240 V receptacles,” said Zupanc. “Trench compactors tend to have limited duty cycle on jobsites, working perhaps one to two hours a day. So instead of just sitting, being stationary, now we have that battery capacity and they can be used to run any other AC appliance.”

The first look concepts were featured at Volvo Days to again obtain feedback from customers who were in attendance. “Is it something that they’re looking for? Is it something that they think solves a problem for them?” Zupanc pondered. “If so, then we look at how do we take that to the next step? Is it something that we have to accelerate, or do we slow down based on their feedback?”

Customer response determines the direction such new technologies may head. “People have been really excited about what they’ve seen so far,” said Zupanc. “So, it’s definitely encouraging.”

Keeping sustainability doors open

Although electrification has been a prominent focus, Volvo CE’s sustainability journey isn’t limited to battery-electric machines. The company is also exploring hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen combustion, biofuels and other solutions.

“We’re actually expanding where we see the opportunity, because it’s going to be different solutions for different applications,” said Young. “Sustainable power systems are not only electric… There are a lot of solutions that can get us to that zero-emissions journey. We want to continue to keep those doors open so we serve our customers with the best solution.”

That means diesel will also remain part of the mix. “Diesel will be around… We still invest in how we make our products as efficient as possible,” Young said, pointing to the next-generation excavators also shown at Volvo Days. The new series offers a 15% fuel efficiency gain over the previous models.

“We still believe that we need to be pragmatic about what we offer to our customers, because it is a transition time, so we need to continue to invest in that,” Young stated. “If we can keep gaining efficiency and have that architecture in place that allows us to use the diesel engine for now and then set ourselves up for that future of electric or hydrogen, then we see that transition happening.

“We know that our customers are going to have a different appetite for the conversion,” he added. “So, we want to be sure that we provide the right solution for them at the right time.”

Volvo CE electric wheeled loader, excavator make North America debut Volvo CE debuted an electric wheeled loader and excavator in North American market
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