Electrification’s Real Bottleneck Is Hydraulics

Heavy machinery can waste three quarters of the energy fed into it. The battery may not be the real barrier to electrification. I’m joined by Hiten Sonpal, CEO of RISE Robotics, whose team is replacing oil-based hydraulics with belt-driven actuation. The target is one of industrial decarbonisation’s least discussed constraints: how construction, mining, port and agricultural machines convert energy into motion. The pressure to electrify heavy equipment is rising, but the economics can collapse quickly. Hiten gives the example of a $400,000 forklift becoming an $800,000 electric machine once a large battery is added. California can offer vouchers for zero-emission port equipment, but subsidies do not remove the underlying efficiency problem. If most of the energy is lost inside the machine, we end up paying for bigger batteries, heavier charging infrastructure and more grid capacity than the job requires. What changed my thinking was the scale of the system effect. Conventional hydraulics operate at roughly 25% efficiency; RISE says its Beltdraulic system reaches about 75%, potentially halving battery size and cutting an $800,000 machine towards $600,000. That same improvement can reduce charging demand and pressure on the wider electricity network. There is another consequence. Replacing analogue hydraulics with drive-by-wire actuation creates the force, position and orientation data needed for predictive maintenance, digital twins, teleoperation and, eventually, semi-autonomous equipment. Hiten is blunt about the AI timeline: heavy machinery cannot learn from operational data that has never been collected. I also push him on the trade-offs — larger cylinders, a projected 15% machine-cost premium at scale, redesign requirements and the commercial proof needed before operators switch. This is not a battery breakthrough story or an autonomy sales pitch. It is an engineering and economics argument for fixing the machine before scaling everything around it. This is for business leaders, climate professionals, investors, policymakers and technologists working on industrial electrification, clean energy infrastructure and emissions reduction. If you are deploying electric heavy equipment, I’d be interested in where the business case still breaks. 🎧 Podcast website: https://www.climateconfidentpodcast.com/ ▶️ Subscribe on YouTube for climate and energy analysis 🎙️ Follow Climate Confident on Spotify or Apple Podcasts ⏱️ Chapters: see timestamps below: 00:00 - Hydraulics Efficiency Problem 00:39 - Meet Rise Robotics 01:50 - Beltdraulic Origin Story 05:01 - Why Hydraulics Persist 05:55 - Electrification Cost Barrier 07:14 - Retrofit And Packaging 08:44 - Key Technical Breakthrough 09:46 - Tradeoffs And Materials 11:09 - Pilot Results Speed Gains 12:27 - Why Heavy Machines Lag 15:55 - Pricing And Climate Impact 18:48 - Business Case Downtime 21:15 - Drive By Wire Telematics 24:14 - AI Hype And Autonomy 26:16 - Community Crowdfunding 28:22 - Sectors Transform First 30:16 - Lightning Round Advice 31:41 - Champion And Closing 32:45 - Shop Tour & Guinness World Record 36:16 - Final Links And Wrap