Chinese mining giant Zijin Mining Group has been steadily building out fleets of battery electric trucks at several of its mines, including a batch of electric haul trucks that the company built itself – because it couldn’t find another supplier.
Zijin Mining Group is a publicly traded partly state-owned mining conglomerate and one of the largest producers of gold, copper, and zinc in China.
It established its own production and assembly line for large batter electric mine trucks, starting with the LK220E dump truck, which rolled off the production line in December 2025. It now has early 300 of these trucks, some weighing up to 140 tonnes and featuring swappable 776 kWh batteries.
The company says its LK220E mine truck addresses a number of key challenges in mine haulage operations, including high fuel consumption and its attendant emissions, frequent malfunctions, and expensive maintenance.
The company delivered the first batch of LK220E haul trucks in May to the Julong Copper Mine, which is located at an altitude of 5,300 meters, is extremely cold and on steep terrain.
Despite the challenges the LK220E maintained over 90 per cent operational uptime, and even when compared to similar models, the trucks reduced energy consumption by more than 17 per cent.
The company is also in the process of developing other battery electric mine trucks, including the LK350E, a larger-tonnage version of the LK220E, and the LK110EI autonomous electric truck.
Julong Copper has also already signed an agreement with Zijin Longking, a subsidiary, to purchase an unknown number of the LK350E.
Another Zijin mine, Xinjiang Zijin Zinc, one of China’s largest lead-zinc mines, is also in the process of replacing its fleet of traditional diesel fuelled haul trucks with battery electric models.
It is unclear at the moment if the zinc mine is yet to be using any of the Longking LK220E electric haul trucks, but the company says that it is already operating over 290 electric trucks from a variety of manufacturers, including Chinese manufacturing company Lingong Heavy Machinery.
A photo posted to the Zijin Mining Group LinkedIn account shows a long row of RTE136 electric haul trucks from Lingong, which are fitted with a 3.5 C fast charge battery of between 872 and 1056 kilowatt-hours (kWh). The ultra-fast 3C-rate charging is capable of charging from 20 to 90 per cent in only 23 minutes.
The Xinjiang Zijin Zinc mine, which already boasts a so-called “zero-carbon transport loop” that is powered by a combination of local wind, solar, and storage projects, has also trialled a 4-minute AI-enabled battery swapping system that is capable of automating over 180 battery swaps in a day.
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