5 questions that reveal why electrifying off-highway machinery is harder than you think

"For years, the conversation has been focused on the machine itself — the drivetrain, the battery, the motor. And while that's important, it's not where the hardest problem lies. The harder question is: what does the machine plug into? Energy infrastructure that doesn't exist yet, job sites designed around diesel logic, operational complexity that no single component can solve. Zero emission isn't a product. It's an entire ecosystem — and that's what we need to start designing."

The boundary conditions are fundamentally different. Off-highway machines don't move around on fixed routes and can't easily navigate to the next High Power Charger. They work in mines, on remote construction sites, in ports at 3am — places where electrical infrastructure is limited, expensive to install, or simply absent. And the energy demands are in a completely different league. These machines need enormous amounts of power, dynamically, with peak loads that dwarf anything a passenger vehicle requires. Diesel handles this almost perfectly: high energy density, fast refuelling, logistics that work anywhere. Acknowledging that isn't defeatism — it's the starting point for honest engineering."

"A much bigger role than most people expect — and one that often gets underestimated. Hardware engineers focus on the machine, infrastructure teams focus on the grid, and software — the layer that needs to hold everything together — tends to arrive too late in the conversation. Digital systems can simulate energy demand before a site even breaks ground, coordinate which machines charge when, and balance loads in real time to prevent the whole system from being overwhelmed. I sometimes describe it as air traffic control for electricity. Without it, a fleet of electric machines is just a collection of very expensive problems waiting to happen."