Originally Posted By: Shannow
Hope that they are cheap enough that the farmer can have two of them, one to do work, one to charge.
Can really see them catching on...
Especially with our grid, here.
And yes, when a farmer wants to harvest for 14+ hours, this is no good. But, I'm sure someone can "come up with" a magical charger that will charge that up in six minutes on one phase power.
SHOZ: JD is selling an idea here. This is a marketing exercise. Other companies (and probably JD themselves) are here busting their backsides to make autonomous power units on the farm, where they will have the cost effectiveness for a small farmer to have one and a larger operation to have more than one. This is where autonomous vehicles will advance - on the farm. A $500,000+ electric monstrosity that can only work for three hours is an answer to a question no one asked. And, I don't care what laws of physics Musk et al are convinced they can break, if you can make an autonomous power unit that is cost effective, fuel (or electricity) efficient, and logistically flexible, then you've got something, rather than relying on something enormous and expensive and having all the creature comforts that a modern tractor has.
You want to talk about whipping buggies, nothing is more long in the tooth, from an agricultural perspective, than a human being sitting in an air conditioned tractor pulling a cultivator for 14 hours. The same goes for swathing, spraying, and harvesting. There's a reason my dad had me do the cultivating as a kid. He had better things to do.