RickRackstop wrote:One thing I think CAT wants from EMD is an all AC electric transmission for their mining trucks. GE make AC electric transmissions for for their competitors Komatsu and Liebherr. The other thing is that recently Progress Tail announced that EMD was going to produce a passenger locomotive prototype using a CAT engine (C175 I think) that would require an new design alternator from EMD to avoid the embarrassment of having to use a KATO of Marathon alternator for the 1800 rpm engine.
When Cat purchased Bucyrus international one of the Equipment lines they acquired was the Unit Rig range of Diesel Electric mining trucks which Bucyrus had acquired from Terex when they bought Terex's mining equipment division. This allows Cat to offer customers a full range of trucks with either electric or mechanical transmissions.
https://mining.cat.com/products/surface-mining/unit-rig
CAT also has been developing it's own in house AC electrical drive systems and already offers these on a couple of it's trucks (including the 797,the world's largest)
The Unit Rig line uses electrical systems supplied by Siemens so it is logical to assume that CAT will want to phase out the third party components and use it's own in house designs.
Given that EMD AC drive locomotives have always used electrical components supplied by other companies (originally from Siemens,lately from Mitsubishi) I wonder if CAT will want to start using their self produced inverters/traction motors, ect. as well...