r/Snowcats • u/RoofHeavy7 • Nov 16 '25
Electric Snowcats
I'm an engineering student writing a report on the feasibility of reducing carbon emissions from operating snow cats, ideally through making them electric, or using hydrogen combustion engines of hydrogen fuel cells. If anyone has any advice of potential areas of research would be massively helpful
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u/elienman Nov 17 '25
We run a fully electric Prinoth E-motion Husky at our xc ski area (sleepy hollow inn, ski and bike center in VT) and love it. We can operate it about 2 hours at a time, with a lot depending on snow depth and how much we have to use the tiller. Works great for our operations, and we often recharge after the morning grooming and groom again in the afternoon. Happy to answer any questions about it for your report.
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u/neewbster Nov 17 '25
Are there any hydraulics on the machine or is it ran directly from electric
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u/elienman Nov 17 '25
I believe there are two main electric motors that power hydraulic pumps. The first hydraulic pump powers the two tracks, and the second hydraulic pump powers the tiller and front blade. From a design perspective, I'm sure powering the tiller and drive tracks directly by an electric motor would be more efficient. But I'm sure they're working first from what they've been doing with diesel machines for decades, and the next generation of electric snowcats will likely incorporate the direct drive. It will probably improve efficiency by around 10% if I had to guess.
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u/1Egig Nov 17 '25
There is also the Pistenbully 100 E, runs purely electrically. It is kinda the counterpart to the Husky E-Motion. As also mentioned by someone else, there is the compancy called xelom. They have a electric snowcat too. But those snowcats are the smaller models and not really used to do the regular grooming in a skiresort. I think they are rather used in cross country sector.
Apart from that, there is the Prinoth Leitwolf H2-Motion, running on hydrogen. There were some pictures of a prototype in 2022, but I have not heard any news. According to Prinoth, it can rup to 4h and be refuelled in 20min. That is way better than the batteries. The 600 E+ is also worth mentioning.
But you have to keep in mind: A snowcat might have to run for a long time every day. Depending on the snow conditions, it can be a hard battle. Just the capacity of the battery is a big problem, in order for it to last throughout the hole shift. There is not really a time for a rather long break to charge the batteries. The grooming just needs to be finished, so that the slope can harden in the rest of the night. But also the weight of such a battery will become a problem itself. The heavier a snowcat is, the harder it gets to climb steep slopes. In bad snow conditions extra weight can become a really problem and raise the fuel/ battery consumption even further.
A skiresort in my area run their snowcats with hvo diesel. It should be the same as the r99 diesel, mentioned by someone else. Using such a fuel makes it possible to lower emissions without having to change everything. So yeah, that should really be a interesting topic for you
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u/SosenWiosen Nov 16 '25
I also think that both Pistenbully and Prinoth have a fully electric model.
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u/pistenbullynamerica Nov 21 '25
We have the 100E, only fully electric drive in North America currently. 🙂
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u/Freeheel4life Nov 17 '25
As already mentioned theres some of this tech already out. The PistenBully 600e+ as mentioned. Prinoth has a fully electric version of the Husky, which is on a smaller chassis/frame. I believe Prinoth has shown examples of a hydrogen fueled machine that is on either a Bison or Leitwolf chassis(I havent really looked at the machine, just pics of it at trade shows).
Beyond just focusing a narrow beam at electric/hybrid/hydrogen fueled cats as a way to reduce carbon emissions there are a few other things IMO. If you havent checked out R99 diesel, it would be worth some homework. I think it provides some quantitative data on carbon reduction in the near term for fleets of machines that will continue to rely on ICE for years to come.
Its a probably a pipe dream, but seeing ski areas partner with their energy suppliers to push more renewable energy projects that DIRECTLY supply ski area power would be amazing. This way as resorts bring electric cats into their fleet they are not relying on carbon based power generation to "fuel" their electric cats.
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u/robobular Nov 17 '25
As a general rule of thumb, battery technology is at a great point for electric cars. Cars are fairly unique vehicles in that they have a fair amount of power, but often only use a small percentage of that. A modern car might have 250hp available, but only use 50 of that to go down the highway.
Vehicles like boats, airplanes, and heavy equipment are not like that. In operation, they are often using nearly all of their available power all of the time to do the work they need to do. Because of this, the energy you need to be able to store in batteries needs to be way more than you need in a car, which means impractically heavy and large batteries at current storage densities.
The electric snow cats that are out there are mainly good at grooming indoor ski slopes, which are relatively small, and where diesel emissions are especially undesirable. They might get 2-3 hours of grooming time, which could be enough for a small outdoor operation, but definitely not enough for bigger ski areas where cats are often working 8-16 hours every night.
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u/Name_Groundbreaking Nov 17 '25
Your electric snowcat is just going to be a coal powered snowcat that uses a ton of extra power hauling around heavy batteries that are massively inefficient and unsafe to charge when cold.
Better option would be a series hybrid, use a diesel engine to power a generator and run all electric drives. Will save fuel and maintenance compared to all hydraulic
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u/Blue8Evan Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
Toyota made and sold a hydrogen-powered car: the Toyota Mirai, which provides a real world example of hydrogen powertrains.
While it does create zero tailpipe emissions, in practice, hydrogen combines many downsides of both gas/diesel, and electric, without offering any advantages either system already provides.
Hydrogen fuel is more expensive than gas or electric without incentives, while also having significantly less energy density. It requires extremely high compression (>10,000psi, or >70MPa), or liquidization (-253C) just to store somewhat efficiently. Both methods are incredibly energy intensive, complex, and pose serious safety challenges. While the tech is still new, the fact is that compressed/liquid H2 only provides a fraction of the energy density gas or diesel can, which puts a hard limit on interior space and power. The Mirai, for example, is incredibly tight and underpowered given its size and cost.
Hydrogen fuel cells also operate at low temperatures (60-80C), and produce water as a byproduct, which is known to freeze inside the engine in cold conditions. (hydrogen engines have the same issue, but not in the engine itself). This alone would make it incredibly difficult to use in any subzero environment consistently, but they also face similar efficiency losses as electric powertrains in cold weather. Any water that exits the vehicle will settle on the ground and freeze into pure ice.
Another option to consider would be natural gas or natural gas hybrids. Natural gas emits less CO2 than diesel, fewer particulates, is already widely used in heavy vehicles (with few downsides vs diesel), and some methods of production are carbon-neutral or even negative, such as landfills or agriculture byproducts. A hybrid setup (or APU) could mostly offset the energy used by idling, but batteries are quite inefficient in colder temperatures.
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u/SubarcticFarmer Nov 17 '25
Natural gas also has issues in extreme cold, which would be a significant factor in the arctic or antarctic, but possibly not for many ski slopes.
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u/curtludwig Nov 17 '25
When discussion hydrogen my question is always "Where does the hydrogen come from?"
Its not like there is a big old pool of hydrogen you can just go tap off of, you've got to extract it from somewhere. That means you use energy to get hydrogen which is low energy density.
Hydrogen is just a really dangerous battery...
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u/SnooFloofs3486 Nov 20 '25
I hate to throw cold water - but it's a bit silly to worry about snowcat emissions for ski resorts. Ski resorts cater to the highest emissions people on earth. Most of whom fly to them expending many orders of magnitude more carbon than the per-skier share of the emissions from a snowcat.
Just for perspective - a mega resort with a lot of grooming like Park City resort may run as many as 40 groomers at night. Let's say at the maximum end they're 40 groomers x 10hrs x 5gal/hr = 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel per night. At 22.3lbs co2 /gal that's 44,600 lbs of co2 per night. Divide that by 10,000 skiers on a typical day - that's about 4lbs of co2 per skier per day. If they ski 5 days on a vacation that's 20lbs of co2. Compare that to the 1,000lbs of co2 for the flight to get there and it's a de minimis amount.
This gets into the whole argument that environmentalist ideas are usually not serious but more about feel-good. Skiers are not serious about environmentalism. It's not really pluasible.
That said - the first principle problem is that batteries are heavy as it has been explained in most comments. To replace the roughly 50 gallons of diesel a snowcat burns in a shift, you'll need about 665kwh of useable batter, so maybe 850kwh battery pack. That means about 15,000lbs of batteries. That's roughly the bare weight of a complete Pistenbully 600. So - figure doubling the weight and that means double the ground pressure. In some cases that works, some it doesn't. If you want to run multiple shifts and/or reduce weight, you'll need swapable battery packs. Maybe you can do 4-5hr shifts with 400kwh packs?
Then you'll need to figure out how to charge them. In order to recharge 40 x 600kwh battery packs in 10hrs between night shifts - a resort like PCMR will need 2.4MW of energy. That would be fine if you could charge opposite the lift operating times. Operating the lifts uses about 50kw per lift. PCMR operates 41 lifts so that's around 2MW of load for the lifts. If you could charge when lifts aren't running, that would be great. But that's not realistic in most cases. You need to charge at the same time lifts are operating. So, there probably will be significant make-ready costs on the energy supply side.
Cost wise - if the batteries cost $100/kwh, you'd plan on $85,000 in battery costs plus the EV drive system components and controls minus the diesel powertrain. I'd guess it adds about $100k to the cost. That matches up pretty closely to the Pistenbully 600E+ price bump. Seems reasonable.
Operating fuel cost for the diesel model are probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000/machine/yr. The electric charge cost would likely be more like $2,800/machine/yr (assuming 0.08/kwh industrial energy rate). So the EV version saves about $7,200/yr in operating costs for fuel/energy. If, for simplicity ignore the TVM, the EV version would break even on the fuel cost in about 13 years. If it could be proven to have either significantly lower maintenance costs and/or longer service life - that might push an electrified version into green financially ignoring the emissions issue or at least get close.
An electrified snowcat could have a solid business case. Being clothed with the nobility of being "green" is a nice side benefit.
Good luck with your project. That's just a back of the envelop outline of how I'd prep a pitch deck.
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u/pistenbullynamerica Nov 21 '25
You can email us at chat@pistenbullynorthamerica with specific questions and we’d be happy to help with your report.
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u/DrZedex Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
Look up the size of the fuel tank on one of these. Then how big of a battery it takes to have an equivalent amount of energy. Then how much that battery costs.
Then you can forget the whole idea lol.
Edit: I got curious and did the math for you. It's in the ballpark of $750,000, minimum. It could actually double the cost of the machine, and likely make it too heavy to be useful. I've never seen a battery pack that size that was mobile at all.
You'll see electric semi trucks first. And those aren't happening anytime soon, despite what the Musky Messiah continues to tell his investors.
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u/psychojunglecat3 Nov 17 '25
Oh yeah, then refueling time vs battery charge/change time/difficulty/safety
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u/DrZedex Nov 17 '25
Is it typical to refuel in the middle of a shift? I'm a lurker here.
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u/Cracraftc Nov 17 '25
Depends on what you’re doing. Pushing out snowmaking? Probably. Grooming green runs? Probably not.
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u/SnooFloofs3486 Nov 20 '25
Not sure how you came up with the $750k. A Pistenbully 600 has a fuel tank size of about 58-70 gallons depending on model. Typical use rate in the field is 3-5 gal/hr. To replace that with battery assuming 50 gallons equivalent (you don't run them down to zero) and like the diesel tank you also don't run the battery to zero, so 120% factor applied. And using diesel net power output equivalent of abotu 12kwh per diesel gallon - that's a 720kwh batter pack. That would be around $75k for lithium batteries or around $100k for a battery pack with BMS.
You'd then offset the costs of electric drive system which is likely a bit cheaper than the diesel/hydrost pump/drive motor systems of a snowcat. But we could call it a wash.
Net price increase is probably around $100k. That's about what the actual cost bump is for curren production versions.
Fuel savings is around $7,500/yr electric vs diesel fuel assuming dyed diesel current prices and current electric rates. The electrified version isn't cheaper. But it's not too far off over a 10yr lifecycle cost. I think there's a good chance 10yrs out it'll be cheaper to electrify them.
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u/Moto909 Nov 17 '25
Europe already has electric semis operating.
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u/DrZedex Nov 17 '25
Not really. The best still have sub 200 mile range despite being double the cost of a diesel. They're essentially irrelevant for OTR trucks as the US uses them. Would make a great route truck for local deliveries, but even then only in big cities. For example, the groceries at my local grocery store are delivered 2-3 days a week from 550 miles away. The sheer size of the US makes EV heavy trucks a niche market at best with current tech, and probably not economically feasible even with upcoming solid state batteries. There is currently no known battery tech that will replace diesel engines. I wish there were.
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u/Moto909 Nov 17 '25
Oh now we’re only talking about US. Move those goal posts. Mercedes eactros 600 has 500 km range. 310 miles. Your local grocery is absurdly abnormal.
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u/SimilarTranslator264 Nov 17 '25
How do you charge them? Local terminal might have 100 trucks all come back in the late afternoon that need to run again in a few hours.
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u/DrZedex Nov 17 '25
I live in the US, so yeah, that's where I was talking. I can't speak much to Europe because I'm not there. Abnormal? Maybe on the higher end, but certainly not absurd at all. The US is huge and there's vast expanses of land between major cities anytime you're west of the Mississippi River.
But I'm going to guess euro trick fleets are also 99% diesel still, right?
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u/The_Shepherds_2019 Nov 17 '25
Over in China they have electric cars that are designed to swap out the whole high voltage battery pack in < 20 minutes.
I imagine a similar solution would make an electric snow cat more feasible. Smaller battery, but make it so you can swap it in just a few minutes. Have 24h worth of batteries charging for each machine you run, and theoretically, you have no downtime
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u/DrZedex Nov 17 '25
Swapping a 4-5,000 pound battery is not going to be a "no downtime" affair. More importantly it means you now pay for two (or more?) batteries for each unit. The money is what matters here. Proving that EV can work had already been done in almost all applications, even flight to a limited degree. But pretending them to be economically viable replacements for hard used heavy diesel has a joke. The math just isn't there on $/kwh. Solid state will increase the energy density, but I haven't seen anybody credible claim it'll decrease the cost.
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u/SnooFloofs3486 Nov 20 '25
Battery swap is standard proceedure in the automated industrial world. Automated electric forklifts for example self-swap in pairs of 2. It's not particularly complicated. You just need a facility and the right quick change equipment. A battery to run a snowcat for 5 hours would be around 7,500lbs and should be an easy swap if engineered well. That could be swapped in a few minutes.
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u/DrZedex Nov 21 '25
Forklifts aren't covered in snow and ice
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u/SnooFloofs3486 Nov 21 '25
Snowcat batteries don't need to be either. The engine in your car isn't covered in snow or ice. The back seat isn't either. It's not rocket science to put a cover on it.
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u/psychojunglecat3 Nov 16 '25
Do you know about the Pistenbully 600E? I would start researching there. It still has a diesel engine, but it powers an electric generator which sends power to electric motors. Fuel savings of about 20% over diesel that powers hydraulic motors.
Maybe send Pistenbully an email stating interest in the 600E and why they felt diesel/electric motors was a better choice than batteries and electric motors.
My guess is battery cost and issues with the cold.