Using typical Australian mining costs for labour, fuel, and power, a preliminary economic analysis, looking solely at the cost savings, indicated that a fleet of small, induction powered, autonomous haulers would be about 25% lower in cost to operate, including capital and operating costs. The savings come from a reduction in maintenance, energy, and labour costs. The analysis did not take into consideration other potential savings from moving to smaller haulers, such as reducing the refuelling infrastructure for trucks, and less expensive maintenance tools, cranes, and sheds or hangers, which can add a lot of additional expenses.
Availability of the autonomous trucks is also expected to be higher than conventional trucks as they do not have diesel engines and complex transmissions, nor do they require operator changeovers, re-fuelling, or time-consuming maintenance procedures. The wireless induction charging system allows for continuous operation of the electric haulers.
Using smaller haulers that can drive up steeper ramps allows for deeper mines within given lease boundaries. Assuming geotechnical factors allow, a new ramp design opens up pits for extracting minerals below the limit of larger trucks. For example, analysis of a small satellite pit indicated a 23% increase in resource utilisation over the design using conventional 90t-class trucks. Using our concept smaller haulers would yield an additional $2.5M in value out of the resource. This additional benefit is without further re-optimisation of the pit shell based on in the lower cost of mining using these smaller haulers.
