The Case for EVs

“You can’t learn if you don’t have any machines out there. It’s harder to learn from the sidelines. For us, that’s our approach,” said Brady Lewis, product manager for emerging products and technology at Case New Holland.

I was searching the Case website to look at mini excavators when a pop-up a window invited me to “Check Out Our Full EV Lineup.” Then, “Learn more about what Case EV machines can do for your business.”

The Case EV lineup includes three models available now, and two listed as “coming soon.” The CX15 EV mini excavator and the SL22 small articulated loader easily fit in our loose definition of compact equipment. The 580 EV, the world’s first electric backhoe loader, might not quite fit the compact equipment definition for all, but with its 1,036 lb., 400V lithium-ion battery, it’s attention grabbing for sure. And it’s a good example of Case’s EV work in progress.

While electrification of outdoor power equipment has grown mostly due to consumer interest in small handheld tools, Case is one of a few manufacturers leading the charge for electrification on the commercial side. A “new tool that lets you tackle new kinds of jobs,” boasts the Case EV webpage. We were curious how the manufacturer got here, and what it is learning along the way. 

“If you do enough Googling, you’ll see we’ve been talking about an electric backhoe since 2020. We announced the first machine and it was very much customer driven,” said Lewis. “Some big utility customers came to us and said, ‘We produce and sell electricity and we’d really like to have an electric power backhoe.’ We partnered with them and that has been a huge learning exercise on both sides. They’re seeing how an electric vehicle can fit in their application and we’re learning a lot.” 

“The backhoe has technology that we have adopted from automotive. Our batteries have similar kind of battery management system and thermal management. We’re on the coattails of automotive and using that from a technology standpoint but the application is very different.”

“You’re not driving it down the highway and pulling off the side of the road to put (a backhoe) on the fast charger. That testing coordination and partnership with those electric utilities helped develope the backhoe into a machine that is capable and performs the job that the customers actually need.”

Testing and Development

“We have engineering teams all over the world developing different products. They do a lot of field testing where an operator’s 40-hour a week job is to go out in the field and dig holes and run attachments and try to break things. And they bring in customers and expert operators in focus groups – we call them a “customer clinic” – where you drive and EV next to the diesel machine. What do you notice was different? What do you like?”

Lewis continued, saying, “EVs have really pushed a different process. It’s not simply a conversion from a diesel machine to an electric. “There’s a lot of tuning especially when you talk about controls and feel. How does the sound or lack thereof drive an operator’s perception? On a diesel machine, you hear it bog down and you can tell, ‘Oh I’m really putting it to it.’ You don’t hear that on EV.” 

“We look holistically at EVs, at a fleet level and we can see how customers use their machines. The backhoe is a good example, where some customers ‘road’ their backhoe. They’ll drive it down the highway and across town where they’ll fix the water main. For other users, the backhoe never sees the asphalt; it’s hauled on a trailer to the job site. Being able to look from at all that user data to see how far the average customer drives the machine.” 

“All of engineering is trade-offs, right? You might want to make the EV’s ‘roading range’ be X for the municipal customer that is ‘roading’ the machine. Compare that to the guy who has a trailer and is going to transport his machine to the job site, he has more energy in the battery than the guy who drove it there. What’s the tradeoff for battery size and energy capacity?”

“It’s trying to focus on each customer and how they use the machine. Then like I said it’s that testing to go with the engineering team to give it to the customer and let him run the machine in his application.” 

Geographically speaking

“I spent a lot of time in the past few months going to California and working on supporting our launch out there. EV is a very top of mind with communities saying that ‘we want to become more environmentally friendly.’ That part of the country is ahead of the curve. I live in Tennessee and we have less automotive EVs on the road.” 

“Still, customers are asking us; that municipal customer on the backhoe is particularly interested because they’re being told from their public leadership this is important. They’re the ones electrifying their fleet of pickup trucks. So naturally the next question is about their yard full of construction equipment. For Case, we see an opportunity to get in on the leading edge where some customers are asking.” 

“Other customers are taking a wait and see approach, and that’s perfectly understandable. There’s a technology adoption curve. We see it as a trend and 20 years from now we’re going to have a mix of power options for customers – some diesel and some electric there may be something else going on we don’t know, but we want to make sure we give them a product that fits their application.”

Difference for Dealers

This electric equipment is also changing the way Case introduces machines to dealers. “It’s not just checking the boxes like another product launch,” said Lewis. “They will need to have a certain charging station set up for their products. When it comes to servicing the machine, there are safety guidelines for working with a high voltage system and dealers need to train technicians. They need to have the right protective gear. We have to amp up our launch rollout because we need to help build that foundational knowledge.”

“We’ve also seen that dealers are able to learn from each other. It’s one thing for me to make a PowerPoint or do an in-person event and walk somebody through a new EV. But when the dealers talk to each other, it’s more impactful. We try to work on opportunities to cross pollinate the dealer teams. When a dealer gets their first delivery of the machine, we walk them through the machine and help them from a sales and service side. We’ll invite them to share the same story from and talk to each other. We want to build a better foundation.”

“I can’t sit here and tell you I know it’s going to take over the world by such and such a date,” Lewis said. But we have the products out there and are focusing in on how the customers are using these first-generation products. That’s how we learn and improve.”