Zijin Mining couldn't find a 140-ton electric haul truck that worked for its flagship zinc mine in Xinjiang, China. So the company built its own. The result is the LK220E — a 140-ton-class electric haul truck equipped with a 770 kWh swappable battery, designed in partnership with Longking.
Zijin has now deployed 290 of them at the mine. They handle 80%+ of the mine's transport work. The fleet is part of 1,700+ electric vehicles Zijin is operating across its mining operations.
This is the cleanest, most under-reported electrification story in heavy industry. The economics aren't aspirational. They're already winning.
What's actually deployed
The LK220E haul truck, co-developed by Zijin and Longking, has been in production since late 2025. Per Zijin's reporting:
- 140-ton payload class — among the largest EV haul trucks in the world
- 770 kWh battery pack — described by Zijin as the world's largest swappable battery for an industrial vehicle
- 4-minute battery swap — the operational key that makes the architecture work for a 24/7 mine operation
- 290 trucks on the ground at Xinjiang Zijin Zinc as of mid-2026
- 80%+ of the mine's transport now handled by the LK220E fleet
- Hundreds more planned by end of 2026 as part of Zijin's net-zero operations goal
The first LK220E was shown in December 2025. Seven months later, the fleet is the dominant transport system at one of the world's largest zinc mines. That's an aggressive production ramp by heavy-industrial standards.
What the economics look like
The headline number from Zijin: energy cost per tonne-kilometer is RMB 0.177 for the electric truck vs as high as RMB 0.68 for fossil-fuel trucks. That's a roughly 4x operating cost advantage per unit of work done — before any accounting for emissions, maintenance, or operator safety.
Zijin also flags three non-energy advantages:
- Lower failure rate. Electric drive trains have fewer complex transmission components than diesel. Less mechanical complexity means fewer breakdowns.
- Reduced operator-error accidents. "Simpler operation" of electric vehicles reduces the risk of accidents from operational mistakes, per Zijin.
- No idling diesel cost. Mines run 24/7. Idle diesel haul trucks burn fuel doing nothing; electric haul trucks can sit at zero operating cost.
For a mine running dozens of trucks at high utilization, a 4x cost advantage on energy is enormous. It doesn't take many months of operation to pay back the upfront cost differential.
Why this is the strongest EV economics story in heavy industry
Most EV coverage focuses on passenger cars because that's where the consumer demand is and where the brand stories live. But the strongest economic arguments for electrification have always been in industrial and logistical applications:
- Fixed routes. Mining trucks run the same haul roads every shift. Range anxiety doesn't exist.
- High utilization. A mine truck runs 18-24 hours per day. Utilization rates are 5-10x passenger car rates.
- Enormous energy consumption. A 140-ton haul truck with a 770 kWh battery is consuming more electricity per shift than a fleet of 30 passenger EVs combined. Every unit of energy replaced is a measurable operating cost reduction.
- Around-the-clock operation. Diesel refueling is a constant operational disruption. Battery swap eliminates it.
- Site-bounded. No public charging infrastructure needed. The mine builds its own.
These are the conditions under which electrification wins decisively, not incrementally. The mine built the LK220E because the economics were already there — the missing piece was a vehicle that didn't yet exist.
What the "made their own" part actually means
Zijin's most interesting move isn't buying 290 electric trucks. It's designing the truck itself when no one else had.
That tells us:
- The commercial vehicle market for ultra-class EV haul trucks is genuinely underserved. Caterpillar, Komatsu, Liebherr — the traditional mining truck OEMs — have announced electric prototypes but have not produced at scale. Zijin's market research said "no one builds this," and Zijin built it.
- Vertical integration is back as a mining strategy. Mining is one of the few industries where the customer has enough scale to justify building its own heavy equipment. The same logic drove Ford's early-20th-century iron ore acquisitions.
- The Chinese OEM ecosystem is the path of least resistance. Zijin partnered with Longking, a Chinese industrial equipment OEM, rather than waiting for Caterpillar or Komatsu. The result shipped in months, not years.
The LK220E isn't a one-off curiosity. It's a template for how a large mining operation gets the heavy EVs it needs when the established OEMs aren't shipping.
What this means for the global mining sector
Zijin is one of the world's largest mining companies. It operates copper, gold, zinc, and lithium mines across multiple continents. The LK220E is the truck the global mining sector didn't know it wanted until it saw one work.
Three implications worth flagging:
- Other large miners will replicate. If Zijin's net-zero economics work at one mine, they work at most mines. Glencore, BHP, Rio Tinto, Vale — all of them have electrification pilots. None of them have a 290-truck fleet at a single site. Zijin just moved the bar.
- Established OEMs will accelerate. Caterpillar announced its first battery-electric underground loader years ago. Komatsu has electric drive mining trucks in development. Liebherr has a 140-ton autonomous electric haul truck concept. None of them have shipped at the volume Zijin is now running. The competitive pressure just got real.
- Mining sites become their own microgrids. Zijin's Xinjiang zinc mine already runs on a local wind, solar, and battery energy storage mix. A 290-truck fleet running on-site solar-and-storage makes the mine's transport emissions genuinely zero-carbon. The combination — site renewables + site-built EVs — is a model other miners can copy.
What to watch over the next 18 months
- Zijin's other mines. The Xinjiang zinc mine is the flagship. Zijin operates dozens of other mining sites globally. If LK220E deployments expand to other Zijin operations, the fleet size will grow into the thousands within two years.
- Whether Caterpillar, Komatsu, or Liebherr respond with competing products. Established OEMs have the engineering capability but haven't prioritized the segment at scale. Zijin's fleet deployment will change that calculus.
- Whether other miners build their own. If Rio Tinto or BHP build an in-house EV haul truck, the Zijin template has gone global.
- Longking's commercial trajectory. Longking is now a credible EV mining truck OEM. If Longking starts taking orders from non-Zijin miners, the Chinese OEM has won the segment globally.
The verdict
The Zijin LK220E story is the strongest argument that EVs win on economics, not policy. A mining company looked at the commercial market, found nothing that met its needs, designed a truck with a Chinese industrial OEM, deployed 290 of them, and reported a 4x operating cost advantage.
The passenger-car EV story is largely a consumer-demand and brand story — heavily influenced by policy support, manufacturer pricing strategy, and consumer adoption patterns. The mining-truck EV story is none of those things. It's a pure operating-economics story in one of the most energy-intensive industries on the planet.
If you're looking for proof that the EV transition is durable past the policy support phase, this is the kind of deployment that proves it. 290 trucks. 4x cheaper per tonne-km. No policy mandate driving the purchase decision. The economics did it.
The mine built the truck the world didn't.
Source: Electrek — This mine needed a truck no one made, so they made their own. By Jo Borrás, 21 June 2026. AutoWheeler analysis built on the source reporting; opinion and interpretation are our own.