Side-by-side combat:-

But whether large or small, construction projects worldwide must now comply with strict legislation concerning engine emissions. It is no longer enough for contractors to submit the cheapest tender – if their construction equipment does not meet the required efficiency standards, their bids may well face automatic rejection.

However, it’s not purely a question of engine efficiency – it’s entirely possible that two competitive machines could each utilize an engine with the same Specific Fuel Consumption across their power curve, but still show a vast difference in the level of their fuel tanks at the end of a long shift carrying out identical tasks. The real key factor is overall productivity – and when that’s combined with ultra-efficient modern engines like those used in Volvo CE excavators, it means that the increasing demand to reduce CO2 on construction sites becomes a far less daunting hurdle to overcome.

So, to prove that its crawler excavators can do more work while also emitting less CO2 than those of its competitors, Volvo CE carries out numerous side-by-side (SBS) comparisons in real-life applications across the Middle East, testing their performance while tracking fuel efficiency. In each case, the results have been more than impressive and provided real benchmark figures that can be used to help prospective owners calculate TCO.

One of the most recent tests was carried out in March 2021 at a quarry, where a mid-sized mid-sized Volvo excavator was with one of its main competitors in the region. As well as operating weight, the machines were similar in terms of bucket capacity, boom and arm length, and age, although the Volvo had acquired an extra 31% more working hours.

The test involved two main tasks performed from a bench – the 90° loading of shot rock into a truck, and the 90° rehandling and loading of a truck with aggregate, with each loading comprising 10 passes. After 10 passes, the trucks’ payloads were recorded and the excavators’ fuel tanks replenished to reveal their consumption, before the process was repeated twice to provide a mean value.

Each task was also carried out using three separate speed modes, precisely matching the RPM of the various modes of the two machines, resulting in a total of 18 loads / 180 buckets per excavator. The experienced local operator who performed all the tests used the competitor’s excavator as his daily workhorse but had operated Volvo models of similar size in the past.

The results were spectacular! Not only did the Volvo excavator produce an overall 18% reduction in fuel consumption/hour compared to its well-known rival, it achieved this while providing an additional 19% of payload/hour. This meant that for each liter of diesel consumed, the Volvo delivered an extraordinary 46% more payload!

As a more specific illustration, when testing was carried out for shot rock loading in the 1400 RPM mode, the Volvo consumed 23% less fuel than its competitor. This enabled a 15% improvement in loading compared with its competitor, or a 49% greater fuel efficiency in terms of tons per liter.

But not all of this remarkable performance can be attributed to the powerful and efficient engine of the Volvo excavator. Increasing productivity comprises a whole range of criteria, ranging from something as simple as the Volvo machine’s more ergonomic control levers to the more telling edge it had over its rival in terms of actuator speed.

Both machines therefore underwent testing for speed of movement of the boom, arm, bucket and swing cycle – with the Volvo coming out on top for every single one! Its most dominant performances were recorded for ‘boom up’ (a 22% edge on its rival) and ‘arm out’ and ‘bucket in’ (both 18% better). Those are a prime example of ‘marginal gains’ that add up to a huge benefit – but more immediately appreciated by an operator would be the 17% improvement in 360° slewing speed. The Volvo’s narrowest wins all boasted a 10% faster time.

A further example of an SBS test shows the importance of rightsizing an engine to the machine to ensure optimum productivity. Here, a Volvo excavator went head to head with a more powerful machine from another major competitor at a UAE quarry – but in giving away just under three tons and slightly less engine power, it may have seemed like the Volvo was the underdog.

This time, the test involved 90° bench loading of a 24-ton dump truck with 50-150mm limestone rock, from a dump height of 3.2m. Again, three equivalent engine RPM and power modes were selected, and three truckloads per excavator per setting were averaged out to produce the final results.

Once the results were tallied, Volvo once again won by a knockout, with an overall 47% improvement in fuel efficiency and 17% less fuel consumption, with the biggest fuel consumption benefits (18-25% improvements) being seen in Normal Operation modes. Perhaps the most impressive figure from an individual test was that of fuel efficiency in the Volvo’s G1 setting (1530 RPM), where it boasted a 57% advantage. In each machine’s most fuel-frugal ECO setting, the Volvo revealed a 42% improvement over its competitor.

Even more impressively, the payload delivered using this most fuel-efficient (and lowest productivity) setting of the Volvo easily surpassed the payload provided by the competitor’s best productivity performance (in maximum power mode). In other words, the rival machine required a far higher fuel consumption to achieve significantly less payload than the Volvo managed! In a nutshell, the Volvo excavator combined the consumption of a slightly smaller machine with the productivity of a larger machine.

“I think it’s safe to draw similar conclusions across the rest of the excavators in our range based on these results,” says Olle Watz, Product Manager, Excavators at Volvo CE. “Yes, there may be minor variations, but relatively mid-range machines like the ones run in these tests can be seen as fairly representative of the whole line-up in terms of the simple and robust technology they employ, which is then upsized or downsized as necessary.”