Cool Planet Group scores conversion of 8,500 trucks
The Irish company Cool Planet Group will convert around 8,500 diesel-powered mining trucks into electric vehicles over the next three years. The order is reportedly worth around 50 million euros.
According to the Irish Times, the order comes from a “world-leading mining company”, the name of which has not been disclosed. Much of the refitting is to be carried out at a recently completed Cool Planet plant in Wicklow, Ireland, and at another planned plant in Ireland, as well as some in Portugal.
Norman Crowley, CEO and founder of Cool Planet Group, said, “Literally in the last week, we secured our first order for 8,500 trucks. It’s a very large mining group. There will be more orders on top of that. Some of them will be built in Powerscourt, but Powerscourt is not the type of place that lends itself to 8,500 and maybe more trucks rolling around it, so some of them will be built in a new factory in Ireland, and some of them in Portugal.”
The company has a couple of major divisions, including a large energy efficiency division. One of the businesses within Cool Planet is Electrifi, which converts classic luxury cars into electric vehicles. The company made cars, for example, for the Fast and Furious movie. Cool Planet adapts classic cars into electric vehicles at the Powerscourt facility. Now the company is now also working on providing new electric vehicles for the mining industry.
Crowley explains: “We got approached during Covid by one of the biggest mining companies in the world to convert a pickup truck to electric, and what that has led to is a monster opportunity where we are now working with five or six of the largest mining companies in the world, and we’ve developed a bunch of vehicles that are electric, don’t emit DPM [diesel particulate matter] but also they are much safer. They have collision avoidance systems, so they can’t run people over.”
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