An electric compact excavator was airlifted to a summit in the Swiss Alps to help rebuild one of the world’s most iconic cable car routes – because diesel machines aren’t up to the job.
Volvo Construction Equipment’s ECR25 Electric compact excavator is being used on a 100 million Swiss Franc project to build a new cableway from the village of Stechelberg, at the mountain’s base, to the 2,970-meter (9,744-foot) Schilthorn summit in Switzerland’s Bernese Alps.
The Schilthorn cableway opened in 1967, making the summit accessible to the general public. Its fame grew following the 1969 James Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and it was the world’s longest and steepest aerial cableway for decades.
Diesel engines suffer from reduced efficiency, increased emissions, and major reliability issues at high altitudes, so an electric compact excavator was the obvious choice for this project.
Melchior Burlon, site manager at Ghelma AG Baubetriebe, the construction firm that’s carrying out the work, said:
There are two main problems up on the mountains.
On the one hand, we don’t have much space here, and on the other hand we often encounter problems with diesel engines operating at altitude owing to the thin air and the cold.
Volvo CE is the only supplier that offers something of this magnitude.
Otherwise, there were only excavators up to two tons and we wanted the most powerful machine for the job – and something that we could still transport via helicopter if necessary.
The ECR25 Electric had to be towed up by a snow groomer, piece by piece, to the station at Birg, at 2,600 meters (8,530 feet). It was then airlifted via helicopter to the Schilthorn summit (if you look closely, you can see it dangling beneath the red helicopter in the photo below):
The ECR25 Electric is now shifting and loading debris on the Schilthorn, and transporting blasted material to the installation site.
The excavator is charged with the Schilthorn cable car’s power supply, which is 100% powered by clean hydropower generated in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, and there’s also a fast charger.
You can watch the airlift and the ECR25 Electric working at the Schilthorn summit in the video here:
Volvo CE has set a goal to reach net zero in its value chain by 2040.
Read more: Volvo tests the world’s first hydrogen-fueled articulated hauler
Photos and video: Volvo CE
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