Putting an electric wheel loader through its paces.

Always ones to embrace a new opportunity, the same Customer Solutions and Engineering teams have also been busy working on the electrification of a wheel loader. Powernews headed out to Malaga, Spain, to learn more about the project and see the machine in action.
 

Right, can you tell me more about this super quiet electric wheel loader.  

"It's been a really exciting project to be involved with,” explains technical sales manager Paul Muller. “In laymen’s terms, we’ve removed an engine from a wheel loader and replaced it with a battery, which we’re now testing in the very warm Spanish heat.

“Perkins has over 90 years of experience in the off-highway industry and that's going to continue, but the reason we're going to be successful is if we make sure the products that we're creating are well validated, well tested. So, we're here in Spain doing that testing so the customers don't need to.

“All this work gives our OEMs confidence in the products we’re developing, the services and ecosystems we're offering and really that assurance that they can rely on Perkins to give them performance that they're used to from our diesel engines, but just in a different form, in this case, electrification.”
 

It’s around 40^OC here in Malaga today. Why do you need to test the battery in such extreme hot and cold temperatures?

"It's critical to test the battery in the higher ambient temperatures that we know our customers expect to operate in,” says Alan Davies, lead design engineer. “We’ve taken the wheel loader to operate in the freezing temperatures in Sweden and now we’re at the other extreme in Spain, so as we can learn everything, we need to, about the battery in these operating conditions.”

“You might say, okay, am I really going to go and operate in the Arctic Circle with a machine like this,” adds Adam Stubbs, senior control systems engineering specialist. “Am I going to operate in the warm conditions outside? Potentially not. But what we can now do is show everybody the impact of the freezing cold and the searing heat on these components.”

What made you decide to convert a diesel-powered wheel loader into an electric powered wheel loader?

“We want to help our customers understand what they need to do when they want to move towards electrification, so we decided to do it ourselves and take on board all the learning along the way”, explains Adam.

“The design considerations when we were given this machine started with a 3D scanning of the machine so that we could understand the space constraints. And then we were able to do the design work in the 3D software. But a lot of it was us as a team looking at it thinking, okay, how do we do this?

“Much like our customers are in that phase as well, we put a lot of content into this machine that we perhaps wouldn't do in production. We've got a lot of equipment on this machine to keep the battery, motors and inverters cool. It’s only when we got the machine that we started to understand, okay, how does everything fit in here?”

Paul adds: “It's been a great learning experience from the beginning to end, getting the machine in, doing the conversion and then taking it to Sweden, doing the cold weather testing it, bringing it here to Spain to do the hot weather testing. It’s been an interesting and insightful project to do. We've learnt so much from doing this. And of course we can share this information with our customers, so come and talk to us, and we'll tell you what we've done, what we've learnt from it and how we can help them be successful in their projects.”
 

Most importantly for owners and operators, how does the electric wheel loader operate?

“Yes, the questions we receive from our customers include ‘how does it drive?’ and ‘what does it feel like?’,” says Alan. “The machine that we've got here uses the same attachments on the front as a diesel engine. If you're sat in the seat, it would drive and function the same as a diesel engine. So, everything with the pedal control, the steering, the lift and tilt, all of that's the same experience. You just don’t have the noise around you.”

He continues: “We need to build that confidence that you can go out to a job site with half a charge, or three quarters of a charge, and still complete what you need to do and bring the machine back. And, that's what this demonstrator machine is there for.”
 

You mention charge levels. How are you charging the battery? What have you learnt so far?

“We've been looking at various different charging scenarios, looking at using AC charging, which is a bit slower but more available, but then also looking at DC fast charging and how we can really quickly charge the battery back up and get it to use,” says Paul. “And that's why we're doing the testing here. You know, running in high ambience really sort of stresses the system out.”

He continues: “On the battery itself, we've got a telematic system that allows us to monitor the battery, see what's happening with it, be able to give feedback to the end user and to the OEM about how the battery's being used and how to optimise their usage of it.”
 

So, what’s the next steps? How can OEMs find out more?

“Flexibility is what Perkins really want to offer our customers,” says Alan. “There’s no one solution for everybody. We're here to customise our solutions to be the best offering, with the right service and support for all our customers, whatever offering or range of offerings they want to take from us.”

Paul adds: “I’d encourage customers to come and talk to us and learn more about what we’re doing and have learnt. We’d love to talk with you.”

Learn more about Perkins’ journey to electrification at the Perkins stand – Hall A4, Stand 336 – at bauma Munich in April 7-13, 2025.