20 March/April 2025 | E-Mobility Engineering Doosan Bobcat is using electrification to not only reduce emissions in construction but also radically change the operation of compact track loaders, reports Will Gray Construction’s wildcat Construction is not the first industry you think of when it comes to sustainability or electrification. Heavy, power-hungry machines do not immediately suggest the ideal platform for battery-powered performance, yet Bobcat has discovered the opposite, with its new T7X compact track loader outperforming its diesel-powered equivalent in almost every area. Bobcat began developing the T7X in 2018, when innovations in the EV industry began to point towards potential crossovers. It identified compact track loaders as ideal candidates for electrification, being the most common and most purchased machines in compact construction. Joel Honeyman, vice-president of global innovation at Bobcat, recalls: “Electrification was starting to become more prevalent in the automotive world and our customers were wanting to reduce their carbon footprint, noise, vibration and other environmental considerations, so they started asking us about those types of solutions. “It just made sense for us to start with the heart of the line-up because we didn’t want this to be a niche type of product. Automotive had started before our efforts and there was already a lot of components, but not so much in our core industry, so we took the opportunity to take all of these emerging technologies, adapt them and combine them altogether. “The easy thing would have been to just take the diesel engine out, put a battery into our current products and have an electrified product, but because of the new technologies available, and the opportunities they presented, it allowed us to think about electrification in a different way.” That innovative approach has led to the creation of an all-electric solution that not only eliminates the diesel engine but also replaces the entire The compact Bobcat T7X in action (All images courtesy of Bobcat)
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