Back in the real world: electric equipment is saving job sites BIG MONEY — SkimNews
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- Groupe Bellemare spent less than $54,000 for roughly 15,000 hours of operating costs using Hydro-Québec electricity through its three-year Plug-In Fleet Heavy Equipment program with IVI, launched in 2024
- Diesel machines the electric fleet supplanted would have consumed an estimated $423,000 in fuel over the same period — an 87%+ drop in fuel costs per the company's own data
- Jason Lagacé, Bellemare operations manager, called the results "really eye-opening" and said "operating costs are almost nil" for the electric equipment on the job site
- LiuGong electric heavy wheel loaders and excavators are what Bellemare runs in its abrasives and minerals division, with plans to keep electrifying beyond the pilot program that runs through 2028
- Transport Canada pilot data showed roughly $160,000 in savings per truck using a $560,000 CAD Freightliner eCascadia, which the article uses to undercut WSJ claims that electrics "struggle to compete" even with diesel at $8 a gallon
- The Wall Street Journal published multiple nearly identical articles under different bylines claiming electric machines can't compete, a framing Bellemare's 15,000-hour real-world dataset directly contradicts
Why it matters: Fleet managers weighing higher up-front costs of electric equipment now have a 15,000-hour, job-site-verified data point: under $54,000 in electricity versus an estimated $423,000 in displaced diesel. Bellemare operations manager Jason Lagacé's "operating costs are almost nil" quote hands skeptics a concrete counter to media narratives that electric heavy equipment can't compete, while the LiuGong deployment extends the cost case to a class of machinery — wheel loaders and excavators — beyond the trucks that usually dominate the conversation.
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