First Moonlander electric bulldozer has 15-foot blade and can be operated remotely

The electric construction machinery startup Lumina has built a prototype of the first battery-powered 32-ton bulldozer that can throw around up to nine cubic meters of material a day.

The electric bulldozer is called the Moonlander and comes with a 15-foot blade that can push double the volume of a conventional bulldozer. Packed in the footprint of a midsize Caterpillar D6, it can grab the load of a Caterpillar D9 machine, for instance.

The Lumina Moonlander is powered by electric motors with 750 HP output and can work for up to ten hours on a charge with regenerative braking. The 32-ton bulldozer charges very quickly, with the cells going from zero to 80% in 50 minutes at a suitable 300 kW charger, and to 100% in an hour and fifteen minutes. A half-hour lunch break charging would bring a depleted battery to 50%.

With the electric motor whirring, the Moonlander can operate in relative silence, with only the 36-inch steel track and the material that is being pushed making a noise, as can be seen in the video of the prototype below.

The first 32-ton electric bulldozer has 360-degree cameras that allow it to be operated remotely in rough terrain or hazardous conditions. The remote control capabilities of the dozer can be upgraded via OTA updates, too.

A number of heavy construction equipment companies such as Liebherr or Caterpillar are building electric mining trucks, dozers, and excavators, but they are often a retrofit of their diesel-powered counterparts. Australia's mining giant Fortescue, for example, is slowly replacing its 240-ton Liebherr T 264 haul trucks with an electric version that is simply a conversion from the Cummins QSK 60 diesel engine to a huge 1.9 MWh battery pack.

Lumina decided to go the Tesla way and build the hardware and software stack entirely in house, so that it can introduce autonomous operation of the electric bulldozer, too, taking advantage of the Nvidia chips inside, and a suite of sensors that it would be equipped with. According to Lumina's founder:

Waymo built all their sensors from scratch. Tesla built a car from scratch. And I think if we really want to have huge market penetration, I think you need to follow the same approach and not just slap on off-the-shelf parts.

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