French contractor Spac, part of the Colas Group, has taken delivery of the first Volvo electric compact excavator, the ECR25 Electric, in the customer trial phase.
“It’s exciting for us to see this machine at a client’s construction site,” says Elodie Guyot, electric compact excavator project manager for Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE). “It’s in a very quiet and peaceful area where residents want that quietness and peacefulness to be respected so it’s crucial to have a machine that meets this need.”
Benjamin Silvent, site manager for Spac says: “For residents and cities in general, it makes our worksites more acceptable because it limits carbon emissions and noise disturbance.”
Alexandre Birot, machine operator for Spac adds: “When we talk to the guy in the trench we don’t have to yell, we talk normally and he can hear everything. With a traditional excavator we first have to turn the engine off for him to be able to hear. What’s more, when we spend the whole day in the trench, usually he would inhale a lot of fumes but now there’s no exhaust gas for him to inhale. If there were only electric machines in the company that would be amazing.”
