Electric semis still sound pretty “high end” for electric devices but Catepillar is seriously getting into electric vehicles. That is, construction vehicles. Out of spec reviews does a deep dive on what CAT is doing in the electric space. It’s a good review because the guy being interviewed happens to be into EVs but works for CAT.
If you start questioning if this makes sense you need to think about typical construction work. For example, while you may have someone running an excavator for an 8 or 10 hour shift the actual amount of time it is doing work is far less. On a diesel excavator the engine is running for all of those 8-10 hours but much of that time may be waiting on something. With the electric version, the motors (with the exception of the hydraulic pump) are drawing no power. And, yes, CAT is evaluating typical use to see if and when it would make sense to replace the hydraulics with electric motors.
