Volvo achieves 3 Mn+ tonne autonomous hauling milestone

Volvo Autonomous Solutions (V.A.S.) has reached a milestone of more than 3 million tonnes of material hauled autonomously in the mining and quarrying segment. The feat was achieved across current and completed customer sites in Europe.

Volvo Autonomous Solutions has worked with customers to develop, deploy and scale autonomous hauling in real-world environments. (Photo: Volvo)

Ingo Stürmer, CTO at V.A.S., said reaching the 3 million tonnes mark demonstrates the maturity of the company’s autonomous transport solution. “This achievement reflects years of close collaboration between the Volvo Autonomous Solutions team and our customers to develop, deploy and scale autonomous hauling in real-world environments.”

V.A.S. supplies customers through Autona / earth, Volvo’s transport-as-a-service solution for confined areas. It includes autonomy-enabled trucks, manufactured at Volvo Group’s Säffle, Sweden, integrated with Volvo Virtual Driver, infrastructure, operations, uptime services and fleet management. According to the company, the solution enables customers to implement autonomy without handling the technical complexities and without major equipment investment.

Key customers utilizing Autona / earth include Brønnøy Kalk in Norway and Boliden Garpenberg in Sweden. Autonomous hauling for Brønnøy Kalk started in 2023, with 1 million tonnes hauled autonomously by 2025. In this Norwegian quarry, V.A.S. handles the flow of material from a quarry to a crusher with nine autonomous trucks on a 5-km route through long tunnels with steep inclines.

In Boliden’s Garpenberg mine in Sweden, autonomous trucks were hauling material from a quarry to a dynamic unloading area as part of a dam reinforcement project.