Dalmia Cement Puts 24 Electric Heavy-Duty Trucks to Work in India

Indian cement producer Dalmia Cement has brought 24 battery-electric heavy-duty trucks into its logistics chain, a move aimed at cleaning up the diesel-heavy transport of bulk raw materials. The company is working with Delhi-based electric logistics provider SwitchLabs and Pune-based electric truck maker Energy In Motion to run the fleet.

The trucks haul petcoke, slag and gypsum from Karaikal Port in Puducherry to Dalmia’s plants in Dalmiapuram and Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu — a run of roughly 140 kilometres each way. Dalmia estimates the 24 vehicles will cover close to 2.9 million kilometres a year while keeping about 3,735 tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere, a figure that assumes roughly 70 per cent of charging power comes from renewables and the rest from the grid.

To keep the trucks earning rather than waiting around, Dalmia and SwitchLabs devised a trailer-swap setup. Tractor and trailer are registered separately, so a tractor can hook up to a fresh trailer while the previous one is still being unloaded. The vehicles are understood to be Energy In Motion’s 55-tonne Ashwa electric tractor, supplied through SwitchLabs. That model originally came with a 282 kWh LFP pack that can be swapped in under seven minutes, and in July a 350 kWh variant was homologated for longer range and broader duties.

None of the parties has disclosed the technical specifications of the 24 trucks now serving the port-to-plant route. Dalmia Cement is separately deploying electric tipper trucks at the same factories under another arrangement with SwitchLabs.