Fortescue is using modified KUKA industrial robots, built for welding on car assembly lines, to handle the heavy charging cables on a 6-megawatt charger meant for its 240-tonne electric haul trucks in Australia’s Pilbara region. Electrek reported the setup on Oct. 22, drawing on a Fortescue video released in early October.
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The robots sit at the end of a very large amount of power. At 6 megawatts, the charger is far beyond anything used for road vehicles, and the cables carrying that current are, as Electrek describes them, heavy, liquid-cooled copper lines.
Welding-line robots repurposed as plug-in arms
According to Electrek’s report by Jo Borrás, the robots are KUKA machines modified for the job, originally designed for automotive welding, and the article says humanoid robots are not yet ready for work like this. The Driven, which covered the same video on Oct. 13, described the robots as adapted car-factory welding robots but did not name the manufacturer, so the KUKA detail rests on Electrek alone.
A voice in Fortescue’s video explains why off-the-shelf parts were not an option. In the words quoted by The Driven, nobody makes a six-megawatt charger, “and therefore nobody makes a lot of the components either.” That gap pushed the company to build much of the charger itself and to borrow industrial automation from another sector.
The 6 MW charger and the Liebherr trucks it serves
The charger is a Fortescue Zero development. The company announced in December 2024 that the Australian Renewable Energy Agency had awarded A$10 million to develop a 6 MW fast charger test unit. That release said the unit was intended to power Fortescue’s 240-tonne Liebherr T 264 battery-electric trucks in about 30 minutes. The release said the first production unit was targeted for the end of 2025 and that the charger is designed to work with a range of battery-electric heavy mining equipment. Ellie Coates, then chief executive of Fortescue Zero, said the chargers were designed to be a safe, rugged, high-power and scalable fast-charging solution.
The Driven reported that 6 megawatts equals 24 Tesla Superchargers running at 250 kilowatts each, that the charger was tested in Perth and is now being deployed at Fortescue’s Eliwana mine, and that the company expects its first Liebherr trucks on site later this year, with XCMG-built models to follow next year. Fortescue is aiming for 20- to 30-minute top-ups while trucks wait for excavators, and a full charge can take four to five hours.
Fortescue’s earlier partnership with Liebherr gives the project context, and the wider fleet plan shows why the equipment matters at a scale of hundreds of machines rather than a single pilot. Electrek’s October 2024 report described the charger as co-developed with Liebherr and equipped with robotic connection options, part of a $4 billion order for 475 Liebherr machines: 360 autonomous battery-electric trucks, 55 electric excavators and 60 battery-powered loaders. The report called the charger twice the power of a 3-megawatt prototype shown at CES the year before. Andrew Forrest, Fortescue’s executive chairman, said in the same period that “The world needs Real Zero now – it simply cannot afford to wait.”
The scale of the surrounding infrastructure explains why the cable robot matters. The Driven noted that the grid supporting the chargers includes more than 4 gigawatt-hours of battery storage, though the article does not describe how that storage is configured. Jörg Lukowski of Liebherr-Mining Equipment said the 2024 order was the single largest equipment deal in the 75-year history of the Liebherr Group, a figure that shows how much of the electrification plan rests on the trucks and chargers being developed together.
Why Fortescue needs hundreds of chargers by 2030
The robot arm is one piece of a much bigger build-out. Dino Otranto, chief executive of Fortescue Metals, said in the 2024 release that the company intends to roll out around 250 fast chargers of varying capacities across its iron ore operations. Fortescue has set a target of what it calls real zero emissions by 2030, which is the goal the charging network supports.
The company also says it built the charger itself and tested it in Perth before sending it to Eliwana, an unusual path for equipment of this class, which is normally bought from established suppliers. Electrek contrasted the 6 MW system with the 2-megawatt “flash charging” offered by some Chinese car brands. Josh Wilson, Australia’s assistant minister for climate change and energy, called the grant project smart and forward-looking and said it could help Western Australia’s mining sector electrify its operations. Public money underwrites part of the effort: a A$10 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency funds the test unit, and the robot handling the cable is one visible sign of how little of this equipment existed before Fortescue went looking for it.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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