Krishnakumar, President of Liugong India, highlights the initial 10 percent market shift from diesel to electric equipment, saying, “Our priority will be to improve the productivity and fuel efficiency of our existing products.”

Liugong Electric excavator and electric wheel loader
Currently, there is a strong emphasis on switching from traditional fuels to electricity. Even the Indian government has stated that we should look for alternatives as the cost of fuel and pollution continue to rise. We already have purely electrical models and hybrid models with our principals. In the case of electric loaders, It ranges from 3.8 to 13 tonnes. Electric excavators are the most commonly used for large-class excavators weighing 100 tonnes or more. It has been seen that in large mining shovels and dumpers generally electric versions are preferred because most of the coal mines are connected with power plants like NTPC and mining is in one area. Internationally, hybrid excavators of 20T and electric excavators of 20T have good acceptance in the market. The 20–25 tonne excavators’ market composition in India is more than 60 percent. Our plan for electrical excavators will start at 22 tons, which can be used for highway and mining projects. Whether it is a dumper or an electric shovel, people have started
preferring electric options worldwide.

The market for electric excavators in India
We are the last entrants in the market for excavators in the country and there is intense competition. The market is still with standard diesel versions now. We will slowly increase our market presence and share. We are not a significant market player at the moment. Acceptance will be low In such case if we come out with the electric excavator right away at a very high cost.So first, we have to gain acceptance with regular excavators. Slowly, we are progressing in different regions of India, making a presence in the market. Once we consolidate we can move to electric or hybrid excavators. We already have a good market shares in loaders, Once our electric loaders are launched, we will vigorously grow in the market.

Demand for electric excavators and wheel-loaders
We are new entrants to the market. Other companies are already running full-fledged with their regular diesel versions. For launching of electric loaders initially followed by excavators, we have planned concept marketing. This means the customer base will be shifted from conventional diesel to electric by educating them the benefits of this value addition. The investment will be higher, but the operating costs will be lower in the long run, which will eventually reduce the overall cost. We have intense competition here and hence our R&D is working all the time to develop new value added features, improvement in productivity of equipment etc and our engine manufacturers are regularly researching on fuel efficiency In India, it has been observed that there is a very major customer profile, which we call the hiring segment. It is not an application segment they buy and hire to end users in different application segments. Presently they give on dry lease or wet lease to users and if we can work on reducing fuel cost these customers can benefit in their bottom line. Even after renting the equipment, fuel is still an expensive element to spend on. As a result, if they purchase or rent electric version equipment, they will save a significant amount of money on fuel though initial cost of investment is high.

Obtaining a competitive advantage with cost-efficient operations
Indians look for high productivity, low operating costs, and more components durability and are keen on reducing fuel consumption. To stand out from the competitors, we have created various maintenance contracts. Our objective here is to fix before failure. Our crew will be positioned at site and will do the preventive maintenance and increase the durability of the components of the equipment. The crew because of preventive maintenance practices not only extend life of components but also reduce downtime drastically. Through this, customers would save a lot of maintenance costs. Our objective is to take care of all the maintenance of our equipment and give the owner maximum uptime so that he focusses on his operations and profits.

Addressing the need for a competitive advantage
We have also focused on hydraulics. We are constantly improving the hydraulic parameters like flow and pressures etc to reduce the cycle time. We research and design larger buckets and If the bucket size is large and cycle times are lesser it will increase the production. The customers look for all these pointers, and we are adding more value to them.

Innovating equipment is imperative.
We are making our products more productive. Equal effort is put into both the Electric versions and the diesel versions. As we foresee, there is a 10 percent market shift from diesel to EV so we will proceed gradually. Our focus will be to make our existing products more fuel efficient. We have introduced many variants in different class [like long reach and other attachments]. Between 20 and 28 tons, we have many variants in terms of configuration. Our entire focus is to innovate and meet the end objective of the user so that they don’t need to modify the product after the purchase; everything is factory fitted.

Growth prospects for equipment buyback, recycling and reuse
We are focusing on buyback and resale. We have started on a small scale, procuring our equipment now but gradually we will begin to buy other competition equipment also, refurbish them, and resell them in the secondary market along with a warranty authorised by Liugong. To reach the various customers, we are already having our dealer workshops which are Liugong authorised workshops. Our dealers are already working to increase the number of workshops with our technical expertise. The same workshop will be open for all the other products of different companies in the market. The buyback will soon be a big line of business for our dealers and us. The plan is to use our R&D process to study many options for refurbishments with the help of our dealers. We will have a good presence in the buyback market. This is our focus, and we will have created a presence of it by the end of this financial year.