[ux4]

I don't know much about the heavy equipment industry, but from the outside looking in, it doesn't appear to have the conditions to support "disruption." First of all, the majority of consumers in the heavy equipment industry are price insensitive. Heavy equipment is mostly sold to other businesses, agriculture, construction and engineering firms, military, and government. Those companies will buy the equipment regardless of price or any other improvement.

Secondly, there isn't really any scalability in the market for heavy equipment. Even if firms made a big change to the heavy equipment design/mfg industry, they most likely won't capture any new markets. Even a substantial change won't make the average Joe say "Hey I should buy a 400 ton dump truck." The only benefactors of the disruption would be the consumers listed above, who again are pretty indifferent.

Finally, it's also heavily burdened by bureaucracy and regulations. I imagine the biggest bottlenecks to the industry are all the requirements for safety and quality. If someone gets hurt with your equipment, you are in for a multi-million dollar lawsuit. You need approvals, permits, inspections, and QA, each of them slowing the process down further. It's also possible the industry can experience a drastic change from a breakthrough in technology, some kind of mass adoption of a new process, or some sudden increase in demand for heavy equipment, but I see that being dependent on changes outside of the industry.