Spac has taken delivery of the first ECR25 Electric and will be using the 2.5-tonne excavator to dig trenches at the Saint-Nom-la Bret猫che golf course, just outside Paris.
Earlier this week 海角社区app announced that its first battery-powered mini excavator was now in serial production, with customer deliveries starting. Volvo Construction Equipment is not at that stage yet but is looking to catch up. The ECR25 Electric was unveiled at this year鈥檚 Bauma exhibition in Germany and has now been delivered to Spac for customer testing.
鈥淚t鈥檚 exciting for us to see this machine at a client鈥檚 construction site,鈥� says Elodie Guyot, electric compact excavator project manager for Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE). 鈥淚t鈥檚 in a very quiet and peaceful area where residents want that quietness and peacefulness to be respected so it鈥檚 crucial to have a machine that meets this need.鈥�
Spac site manager Benjamin Silvent said: 鈥淔or residents and cities in general, it makes our worksites more acceptable because it limits carbon emissions and noise disturbance.鈥�
Machine operator Alexandre Birot added: 鈥淲hen we talk to the guy in the trench we don鈥檛 have to yell, we talk normally and he can hear everything. With a traditional excavator we first have to turn the engine off for him to be able to hear. What鈥檚 more, when we spend the whole day in the trench, usually he would inhale a lot of fumes but now there鈥檚 no exhaust gas for him to inhale. If there were only electric machines in the company that would be amazing.鈥�
The Volvo ECR25 Electric replaces a combustion engine with 48V lithium-ion batteries and an electric motor that powers the hydraulics to move the machine and attachments. The batteries store enough energy to power the machine for eight hours in typical applications, such as utility work. An onboard charger enables overnight charging via a regular household plug socket. A fast charging option, requiring more powerful grid access, will also be available.
The Volvo ECR25 Electric will be available in selected markets from mid-2020.
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