Today, electric wheel loaders can easily achieve monthly sales of two to three thousand units, while electric excavators still hover at only ten to twenty units per month.

In July 2025, electric wheel loader sales reached 2,391 units, with a penetration rate of 26.57% for the month; from January to July 2025, a total of 16,344 electric wheel loaders were sold, with a cumulative penetration rate of 22.15%.

Meanwhile, in July 2025, electric excavator sales stood at 9 units, with a penetration rate of 0.05% for the month; from January to July 2025, a total of 149 electric excavators were sold, with a cumulative penetration rate of 0.11%.

Faced with such a stark sales gap, one cannot help but ask: they are all construction machinery, so why can't electric excavators sell?

Three major factors constraining the development of electric excavators

1. Inherent disadvantages caused by operating scenarios

The primary factor preventing the large-scale development of electric excavators is the limitation of operating scenarios.

Unlike the stable operating scenarios of electric wheel loaders, excavators work in highly dispersed scenarios—construction sites, mines, and the field are all places where they operate. These dispersed scenarios mean electric excavators frequently need to relocate between different work sites, and this high-frequency relocation makes them highly dependent on external charging piles. However, charging pile coverage is currently low, and field operations even face the dilemma of "no power to charge." This inherently puts electric excavators at a disadvantage in terms of electrification implementation.

Imagine a contractor takes on a field project: the electric excavator charges up in the county town, uses a quarter of its battery just driving to the site, then works for two or three hours and has to return to town to recharge—because you have to reserve power for the trip back. In such cases, construction progress is greatly affected.

2. The high cost of electric excavators

Because electric excavators require larger battery capacity, their initial cost is higher than that of electric wheel loaders. Although electric excavators can save on fuel costs during use, the excessively high initial cost makes the payback period longer.

At the same time, in high-intensity operating scenarios, excavators need long periods of high-power output, and existing technology struggles to support such high-intensity continuous operation. Equipment often needs frequent charging, and to address the short range of electric excavators, some companies also need to provide mobile charging vehicles or temporary transformers and other equipment—another considerable cost. In addition, battery wear intensifies under complex working conditions, and replacement costs can even exceed those of a used fuel-powered machine, significantly reducing the residual value of electric excavators.

Overall, although electric excavators have an advantage in energy costs, their full-lifecycle cost competitiveness has yet to emerge.

3. Core technologies need upgrading

At the core technology level, technical challenges such as heat dissipation for high-power motors and battery thermal management remain incompletely resolved. This is particularly prominent in extreme operating scenarios—for example, when electric excavators work in severe cold regions, battery activity drops sharply, and the cells must be heated to bring their temperature back into the normal operating range. This process itself consumes a large amount of electricity, making electric excavators inferior to fuel-powered excavators in range and efficiency under the same conditions.

In addition, excavators typically require long periods of high-power output (such as digging, breaking, and swinging), placing extremely high demands on motor power and control system stability, and existing technology struggles to support such high-intensity continuous operation. Although manufacturers advertise eight hours of operation on a single charge, user feedback indicates this is generally not achievable.

As for the application ecosystem, because excavator working conditions are extremely complex—covering earthmoving, breaking, lifting, and many other types—different conditions place vastly different performance demands on equipment. This makes it difficult to establish unified technical standards for electric excavators, greatly increasing the difficulty of subsequent equipment maintenance and repair.

Facing the dilemma, how should electric excavators break through?

Although the industrialization of electric excavators currently faces multiple challenges—including operating scenario limitations, high initial costs, and core technologies in need of improvement—their development potential remains worth anticipating. What electric excavator OEMs need to do now is to target each dilemma and find ways to break through them one by one, achieving pilot applications of electric excavators in multiple locations as soon as possible to boost user confidence.

1. Pilot applications: prioritize breakthroughs in fixed locations

Drawing on the successful experience of wheel loaders in specific scenarios, electric excavators can prioritize breakthroughs in fixed scenarios. Factory campuses, underground mines, and similar sites have relatively stable operating environments, relatively high environmental requirements, and usually well-developed internal power grid facilities, which provide convenient conditions for charging electric excavators.

In these scenarios, electric excavators can rely on the site's internal power grid for convenient charging, effectively avoiding the problem of insufficient external charging piles. Through promotion and application in fixed scenarios, electric excavators can gradually accumulate technical data, enhance users' trust in their performance and reliability, and lay the foundation for subsequent application in broader scenarios.

2. Optimize costs with multi-dimensional support from technology, policy, and finance

To reduce the initial purchase cost of electric excavators, companies first need to make progress in battery technology, thereby lowering production costs and enabling sales prices to come down. Second, the government needs to further optimize its policy support system, such as purchase subsidies for new energy construction machinery, to further ease users' economic burden and increase their willingness to buy electric excavators. Finally, financial institutions need to develop financial products tailored to electric excavators, such as financial leasing and installment payments, to ease companies' funding pressure so that more enterprises can afford to purchase and use electric excavators.

These innovations in policy and business models can effectively shorten users' investment payback periods, enhance the market competitiveness of electric excavators, and accelerate their market promotion and application.

Corporate practices with electric excavators

Although overall electric excavator sales are currently low, major construction machinery enterprises in China continue to innovate and develop new electric excavator equipment, striving to replicate the success of electric wheel loaders. Major manufacturers have already launched a series of electric excavator products and subjected them to practical testing in construction operations.

In June this year, XCMG's XE215EV pure electric hydraulic excavator was delivered in batches to a large domestic new energy materials production base. The high-dust lithium slag processing environment had long been plagued by exhaust pollution and noise from traditional fuel-powered equipment. The XE215EV achieves zero exhaust emissions and reduces operating noise to 67 decibels, not only reducing pollution but also creating a healthier and more comfortable working environment for operators.

"XCMG electric excavators can significantly reduce carbon emissions and improve the working environment quality in raw material processing. This is highly consistent with our green factory philosophy." The customer spoke highly of the environmental features demonstrated by the XE215EV.

At the Changsha Construction Machinery Exhibition in May 2025, Zoomlion demonstrated its green unmanned equipment in a dynamic display. Zoomlion's unmanned excavator uses multiple intelligent operation modes such as voice control, remote control, and short-range remote control to automatically achieve path planning, surrounding environment perception, and autonomous control, and works in coordination with unmanned skid-steer loaders and unmanned aerial work platforms to meet the needs of different scenarios.

In April 2025, SANY's SY870E super-large-tonnage electric excavator was delivered in batches to a large coal mine. This electric excavator is equipped with a 6kV, 380kW high-voltage AC asynchronous motor, with torque increased by 30%. At the same time, the SY870E, based on sensor closed-loop technology, enables intelligent assisted operation and remote diagnostics, and also supports customized function development, providing tailor-made intelligent solutions for mines, with significant economic advantages and comprehensive use costs reduced by more than 40%.

In early 2023, LiuGong delivered four electric excavators for the Chinalco Pingguo Aluminum project. As of September 2024, these four electric excavators had each accumulated more than 9,000 hours of operation, with two of them surpassing 10,000 hours. These excavators work an average of 15 to 20 hours per day, maintaining efficient operation in high-intensity, long-duration working environments, fully demonstrating the durability and stability of electric excavators.

In high-intensity working environments across key operating sites nationwide, dozens of LiuGong electric excavators have each exceeded 10,000 working hours, consistently maintaining efficient operation and demonstrating the durability and stability of electric excavator products.

In addition to achieving pilot applications in the domestic market, domestically produced electric excavators are also making continuous breakthroughs in overseas markets.

For example, Sunward's electric excavators developed to meet European environmental standards saw sales in the European market grow by 300% year-on-year in 2024; SANY's 21-ton-class electric excavator SY215E made its European debut at a product launch event co-hosted by SANY's Dutch dealer DNL and its Dutch subsidiary, securing orders for 20 units on the same day; and as early as 2022, more than 100 XCMG XE270E pure electric excavators were exported for the South American "E20" new energy equipment supply project, setting a new record for China's new energy excavator exports.

Admittedly, overall electric excavator sales are currently relatively low, but we should not overlook the achievements of construction machinery enterprises in the electric excavator sector over the past two to three years. Moreover, the fact that electric excavators are not selling well now does not mean they won't sell well in the future. Taking a long-term view: first, electrification is one of the development trends of the construction machinery industry, and the share of electric products will certainly continue to rise; second, future battery technology will inevitably be better than today's, making it easier to drive the development of electric excavators; finally, excavator sales have a massive base, and once electrified equipment achieves large-scale sales, the market potential will be enormous.

In summary, perhaps in the next five years we will witness electric excavator sales overtaking those of electric wheel loaders.