Scania’s autonomous trucks make global debut

Scania and Regroup will launch the world’s first fleet of autonomous in-pit mining trucks at the Butcherbird mine in WA’s Pilbara.

The fleet of 11 autonomous rigid G 560 8×4 tippers – which will transport manganese ore and waste material – is targeting commencement of operations in 2025.

Compared to a traditional mining fleet, these vehicles are expected to deliver improved productivity, reduce carbon intensity through improved fuel efficiency, enhance safety and lower costs.

Scania Australia managing director Manfred Streit commented on the milestone.

“Scania in Australia has been working closely with several partners in the local mining industry over recent years to finesse our autonomous truck program in advance of this announcement,” he said.

“We are delighted that this historic event, the first order globally for a fleet of Scania’s new autonomous trucks has been made by a privately-owned Australian company.”

Regroup, a fully integrated civil, mining and bulk commodities haulage partner, sees the autonomous truck fleet as the first critical stage in its path towards a zero-tailpipe emissions mining fleet future and managing director Michael Still is excited to be deploying the autonomous vehicles.

“Regroup has excelled at initiating and delivering sustainable and renewable practices, and these new autonomous trucks are just the first step in our transport plan,” he said.

“We are looking forward to adding Scania zero emission autonomous mining trucks as the next step.”

In addition to the autonomous trucks, a driver-operated battery electric Scania rigid 8×4 truck will be incorporated at Butcherbird to serve as a water cart.

“We see the autonomous Scania fleet also reducing our diesel consumption, as we’re moving from a larger capacity fleet of 100t – 200t vehicles to a smaller class unit, and from a decarbonisation perspective, we’re burning less fuel on site so we’re reducing our impact on the environment to achieve the same commercial result,” Mr Still said.

Regarding this autonomous fleet, Mr Still says Regroup’s existing workforce will be unaffected because the new fleet will be operating as an expansion of a current program.

“On the one hand we will reduce our driver requirement by 21 people, due to the autonomous trucks replacing three shifts of seven drivers, but we will be creating control room jobs,” he said.

“Our existing workforce is unaffected, but it allows us to grow not only to rely on new talent into the business as much as in the past.

“We’ll be able to take people out of the dirtier more hazardous environment and deploy them into safer, cleaner and more appropriate working environments.”

Initially, Regroup will run the diesel electric vehicles with one battery electric vehicle in there, but as the technology develops, the full fleet will switch to electric.

“There is a leap of faith involved with commercialising an autonomous solution from Scania for the first time in the world,” Mr Still said.

“With anything that you do for the first time there’s going to be a leap of faith because there’s no baseline data, but one of our values is to think big.”