This study provides a new permanent magnetic eddy current drive system to solve the energy-saving drive problem of the scraper conveyor working under bad conditions, including overload startup, severe abrasion and pollution. Considering the practical conveying conditions of the scraper chain on a fully mechanised coal mining face, this study creates a mathematical model for the new permanent magnetic eddy current drive system of the scraper conveyor based on its characteristics and indicates the motion characteristics of the scraper chain driven by two wheels. This study verifies the model accuracy with a pre-startup technology depending on the scraper conveyor on the No. 12318 working face of the 8th coal mine in the West No. 1 mining area of the Pansan Coal Mine of the Huainan Mining Group. According to the results, the motion acceleration of the scraper chain based on the new permanent magnetic eddy current drive is lower than that of the scraper chain with a hydraulic coupler under the same running and load during startup and acceleration and declines by approximately 14.7%. Consequently, this can decline the startup impact due to the serious abrasion and frequent overload of the scraper chain working under bad conditions.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.