CASE eliminates “messy middle” worries with ZQUIP battery swap tech

Amid the alliterative, anti-EV “messy middle” rhetoric and the Trump Administration EPA’s ongoing regulatory rollbacks, it’s been tough for fleet and equipment buyers with 8-12 year replacement cycles to make sense of where things are headed – but a new partnership between CASE Construction Equipment and ZQUIP could put those concerns to rest (and make a trip to the CASE dealer a no-brainer).

iVT reports that CASE Construction Equipment has formalized a new partnership with ZQUIP to deliver heavy equipment assets featuring ZQUIP’s swappable energy modules – self-contained power units that could be batteries, fuel cells, or diesel engines. The technology aims to eliminate range and regulation anxiety while maximizing a job site’s energy efficiency and meeting the complex demands of modern construction projects with unprecedented flexibility. And, crucially, at a lower cost than either a mixed BEV/ICE fleet.

“A fully integrated battery system is extremely expensive upfront,” explains Chris LaFleur, managing director of ZQUIP. “This system allows (customers) to buy essentially a bare tool, at a much lower price point.”

For the uninitiated, a “bare tool” is effectively an equipment asset like an excavator or wheel loader that arrives on a job site without a power plant. It’s not electric, it’s not diesel, it’s not natgas – it’s just the machine, with a flat “plate” more or less where you’d expect an engine to be.

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Once you’re ready to put that tool to work, a ZQUIP Energy Module gets dropped in, cordless-tool style, and it’s ready to go. That Energy Module could be a contained battery-electric powertrain, or it could be a generator, depending on the energy needs, duty cycles, or regulations (both noise and emissions) that are in play at that specific site.

And, like their hand-held Ryobi cousins, you don’t need as many ZQUIP Energy Modules as you need bare tools. In practice, that means you’re not tying up hundreds of kWh of battery capacity in idle machines.

“The customer decides how he wants to use it,” says Eric Zeiser, product portfolio manager at CNH Industrial, CASE’ parent company. “If he wants to keep his cost low in the beginning, he can buy just one energy module. He could buy the simplest module available to keep his initial purchase price down. And then, in the future, if in six months he realizes his job sites are bigger, he needs more power, he buys the second and third module as he needs to.”

What’s more, different sized equipment assets have different energy needs – and bigger equipment means bigger possibilities. So, while a CASE WX155ZQ wheeled excavator accommodates two energy modules, a CX210ZQ tracked excavator supports three. “On the three-bay CX210 you can have an LFP battery, an NMC battery and a diesel hybrid Energy Module, all together working at the same time,” says LaFleur.

More energy needs = more options

Batteries when it makes sense, ICE when you need it. But, even with an ICE generating the power, the machine is still electric.

“The excavators are always electric,” says Rob Bauer, engineering manager for ZQUIP. “The question is, where does the energy come from? In an optimum case, when you have a normal workday, you’re pulling all the energy out of a battery, and that’s a great day. Everything’s perfect. On the other hand, if you’re in a difficult site, or you have to work a lot of hours in a day, we give you options.”

That’s not just options for the operator, it’s options for the OEM as well.

Growing the CASE EV family

For CASE Construction Equipment and its parent company, CNH Industrial, the ZQUIP partnership represents a strategic expansion, enabling it to grow the brand’s beyond existing compact electric offerings without sacrificing round-the-clock capability or requiring a utility-scale supply of new battery materials.

“CNH has always been a leader in sustainability, and we have a full range of compact electric vehicles, but we didn’t have a solution for heavy machinery until now,” says Egidio Galano, director of construction equipment product management for Europe at CNH Industrial.

The new partnership builds on an established relationship between the companies dating back to 2019. CASE’ 580EV electric backhoe loader, released in 2024 as the industry’s first production-ready purpose-built electric backhoe, utilizes the TerraTech platform from Moog (ZQUIP’s parent) for electric motion control and served as ZQUIP’s initial tester.

Since then, the project has continued to evolve, with the potential to grow to even bigger, more capable heavy machinery offerings. No word yet on pricing.

SOURCES | IMAGES: ZQUIP, via iVT.

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