A recently updated report from Off-Highway Research put the number of electric machines sold in 2024 at 18,691. That was a 110% jump on the year before, and the specialist forecasting consultancy expects another 45% increase in unit sales in 2025 versus 2024.

That’s not to say that growth will be uniform around the world, however, nor that the machine types that sell well are the ones that might initially have been expected.

Drill down further into Off-Highway Research’s figures, and you find that 80% of the market for electric machines is in China, and in particular for larger wheel loaders for use in the mining industry, as well as for the type of wide-bodied trucks popular in China as an alternative to traditional dump trucks.

Another 10% of the market is in commodity-rich emerging economies that are being served by Chinese OEMs.

“Chinese OEMs have focused on bigger equipment which is predominantly used in mining and quarrying. In those industries, you have high utilisation and the payback comes a lot quicker. You also have facilities that are on the grid, so you can charge them afterwards,� says Off-Highway Research’s managing director Chris Sleight.

Elsewhere in the world, it’s something of a different story. Even with the relatively high number of units sold in markets like China, electric machines still only made up 1.5% of the global equipment market in 2024, he points out.

And in markets like Europe and the US, where OEMs have focused their attentions on compact equipment that is relatively easy to electrify, sales remain sluggish as industries like construction where utilisation rates are typically lower than in mining. In construction, would-be buyers appear to be dissuaded by the longer payback periods for machines that are often three times more expensive as diesel equivalents.

New thinking required?

Sleight stresses that he has no doubt electrification is coming, even in regions of the world where sales figures make for grim reading for the OEMs that have committed themselves to developing new models. But the speed of adoption and the type of machine that appeals to end users may require an adjustment in thinking.

“A lot of European and international manufacturers have developed electric versions of small wheel loaders and mini excavators but they just aren’t used enough to get a payback because they are only run for a couple of hundred hours a year. And it is not like you can charge it into a lamppost at the end of a day. The charging is problematic,� says Sleight.

He suggests that eventually OEMs will move from producing machines that are easiest for an engineer to electrify and instead focus on those applications that lend themselves best to electrification.

Outside of mining and quarrying, that’s likely to be construction equipment sold to the waste management industry, for example, where utilisation is high and the facilities in which the machines work are connected to the grid.

“In the long term, electrification will happen,� Sleight adds. “There are naysayers who will point to the fact that it has not gone well in Europe and North America in the last couple of years and declare that the concept is therefore dead. I completely disagree with that. But perhaps it is fair to say that some of the products that have been launched so far have not been the ones that have the greatest potential.

“That said, over the long term, compact equipment probably will go electric, even if it takes longer than some have suggested. Ultimately, they are better machines � they are quieter, there are no tailpipe emissions, no vibration, less maintenance and they are cheaper to run. So as battery prices come down, they will get more attractive. Eventually, the industry will find ways to charge them too, whether that means having them delivered with a power cube, for example.�

Hydrogen combustion’s promise

Over the shorter term, Sleight feels there are other promising avenues that have arguably received less attention than electric.

Cummins� fuel agnostic platform used as basis for X15H engine (Photo: Cummins)

Among those is hydrogen combustion. “From a technology point of view, it’s there. Cummins has developed an engine [the X15H] and JCB has developed hydrogen combustion prototypes � it will be interesting to see when those are launched commercially,� Sleight says.

He acknowledges that the challenge here is where the fuel comes from and how to ensure that it is produced sustainably. “There’s a lot of infrastructure and groundwork required but it has a lot of potential for the future. The advocates of hydrogen would also make the point that it can be generated sustainably, whereas with batteries, you need rare earth metals which aren’t distributed evenly around the world.�

None of these technologies is the whole solution, however. Sleight emphasises the importance of other carbon-reducing technologies too, such as synthetic fuels and biofuels.

Uptake of electric machines will continue to grow. Following the forecast 45% increase in global unit sales electric machines in 2025, Off-Highway’s updated report forecasts 21.4% year-on-year growth to 32,966 units in 2026, following by 17% growth in 2027 to 38,742 units in 2027. But China will continue to account for the majority of sales, and the total will remain a small proportion of overall construction equipment unit sales.

Electrification is still coming, but more slowly and patchily than some of its loudest advocates might have predicted.