Electric digger scoops top award for engineering
DIGGER-MAKER JCB has scooped the UK’s most prestigious engineering prize.
The Rocester-based company saw off competition from Jaguar Land Rover and Babcock’s LGE business to win the 2020 MacRobert Award for its world-first electric digger.
The company was awarded the top prize – £50,000 in cash and a gold medal – from the Royal Academy of Engineering, which describes the accolade as the most prestigious prize for UK engineering innovation.
The 19C-IE digger from JCB is the world’s first volume-produced fully electric digger. To date, the current fleet has saved the equivalent of 15,100kg in CO2 emissions across 5,616 hours of work.
As well as significantly reducing carbon emissions, the electric digger has zero exhaust emissions and very low noise levels.
JCB chairman Lord Bamford said: “To win one of the world’s most respected engineering prizes is an outstanding endorsement for JCB’s electrification team, who have achieved so much in applying a science which was new to our business.
“JCB’s electric mini excavator will contribute to a zero carbon future and help make the world more sustainable. It’s a huge honour for our contribution to be recognised in this way.”
Award judges lauded JCB for demonstrating the utility of electric machines in a construction setting and the potential for future innovation to boost sustainability in the sector. It is hoped this entry could do for the construction sector what the double MacRobert Award winner Johnson Matthey did for the motor industry with the catalytic converter, which has stopped hundreds of millions of tonnes of pollution from entering the atmosphere.
Professor Sir Richard Friend, chairman of the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award judging panel, said: “The digger is more than a great bit of engineering, it has the power to be the catalyst for change in an industry that is responsible for around 10% of all of the UK’s carbon emissions.”