Hydraulics Waste 75% of Energy - Inflating Heavy Equipment Electrification Costs

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Heavy equipment electrification has a hidden problem: the machinery itself can waste most of the energy you put into it. That means bigger batteries, higher capital costs and a weaker business case before the machine has even started work.

My guest is Hiten Sonpal, CEO of Rise Robotics, who is working on replacing conventional hydraulics with belt-driven actuation. We get into why hydraulic systems can be roughly 25% efficient, how that inefficiency drives battery and charging requirements, and why downtime and maintenance failures may matter even more than the emissions case.

We examine why better batteries are not always the answer, what changes when heavy machinery becomes drive-by-wire, and why industrial AI and autonomy depend on something far less glamorous: machines that can actually generate useful operational data. We also look at prognostics, digital twins, teleoperation and the prospect of one operator supervising several machines rather than controlling just one.

Listen now to understand what is really constraining heavy-equipment electrification — and where better engineering can cut cost, downtime and operational friction.

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