As the GSE industry increasingly adopts electric-powered equipment, Kalmar Motor is relying on its 14 years of experience producing electric conventional and towbarless tractors.
In 2008, facing global economic downturn, Kalmar owner and managing director Magnus Johansson faced three options. The first was to scale down the company to meet the sales and production requirements. The second was to maintain its current workforce and hope the downturn wouldn’t last. Option three was to invest in the future with development and production of full electric powered tractors.
Johansson opted to move forward with the electrification of the Kalmar Motor product range.
“The goals for producing full electric power tractors with lithium-ion batteries was to create tractors with the same operational capability of the diesel version but with a fraction of the operating costs and most importantly, reduce CO2 emissions,” says Sean Bryan, technical sales manager at Kalmar Motor. “Following the investment of company resources Kalmar Motor's first full electric powered tractor, the TBL50EL was delivered to SAS airlines in 2009.”
According to Kalmar officials, SAS reduced its operational and maintenance costs after deploying the TBL50EL. More product development was completed as SAS used the tractors at Kastrup Airport (CPH) in Copehagen. Now, 60-70 percent of Kalmar’s production is electric powered tractors operating in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, Portugal, France, UAE, India, China, Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, USA and Japan.
While electric pushbacks and tow tractors offer reduced emissions and lower operating and maintenance costs, charging infrastructure has been a question facing the industry.
“Generally the challenge for ground handlers is that the infrastructure for charging power is controlled by the airport authorities and even though they encourage ground handlers to use electric equipment on the airport, they are not so fast to react to requirements,” Bryan says. “This is something that we are sure will change over time and we do acknowledge that adapting the airport for a complete change would be very difficult. However, a staged transition of equipment type is much simpler for all involved.”
Since the first TBL50EL was delivered in 2009, Kalmar Motor introduced the TBL190EL and TBL800EL in 2015, followed by the TBL180EL and the TBL100E. Kalmar’s conventional range of tractors includes the FB150E, which was first delivered in 2010, followed by the FB250EL and then the FB600EL.
Today all of the company’s aircraft towing tractors are available in full-electric drive with many models now exclusively available as electric units.
“We have also developed our systems and created a multitude of charging options, including regenerative charging , AC charging, DC charging, 400Hz charging, range extender charging and GPU/range extender charging to cater for all customer operational demands,” Bryan says. “The next step is quite possibly the introduction of hydrogen fuel cell recharging of the tractor batteries to give even cleaner and more efficient charging options.”
