Why are people making out to be that a self driving tractor needs to be an EV? I personally don't see one in the near future for most farmers. Sure, cleaning out the stalls or some tasks on a farm could be done. But when it's planting season or the fall harvest I hear diesels running full bore for days (and nights). They stop just long enough to fill them up. That's a lot of power needed to do the job. EVs shine when you have lots of low power times. It's like drilling holes with a cordless drill. You can drill a lot more 1/8" holes than 1" holes before the battery dies. That means the tractor will be stopping often to recharge the battery for a lot longer than the diesel will take to top off it's tank.
I think this is an excellent point. Autonomous operation and electric operation are not strictly mutually inclusuve. Integration of autonomous operation into an electric tractor is undoubtedly more streamlined, but to assume they are is marketing hype.
If the autonomous operation is what is attractive, the technology can equally be applied to a diesel tractor. The marketing would have you believe it's one or the other. That sounds to me like a sales pitch that is trying to gloss over some of the deficiencies of the electric tractor by distracting you with a new shiny feature.
Shortcomings like a second battery pack to run longer than 10 hours at $15k, only a 10 year warranty on said battery, no loader (assume $10k)
So, from purely an energy efficiency standpoint, to run all day it's going to cost ~$60k (loader but no extra battery) versus roughly $30-40k for a similar diesel. So, $20-30k more.
45 hp is about 33 kW. Gas would cost about $40/day. Electricity at 0.08/kWhr for 10 hours would would cost $26.40/day. That's a savings of roughly $15/day.
Assuming 200, 10 hour days per year, that's a savings of $3,000/year for 2,000 operating hours/year, which seems high, but I'm not a farmer. Even at that high usage, it will take 7-10 years to get your money back. Just in time to buy a new battery at 10 years ...
Costs may vary slightly based on electricity rates. (For example, mine are $0.13/kWhr, which would take almost twice as long to recoup my costs).
My rule of thumb is anything that takes longer than 6 years to recoup my investment is a bad deal, because I can do better by putting my money in the stock market.
So, I think it has very little to do with initial feelings, and really depends on the economics of putting it down on paper to figure it out.
It's close, but still not there.
