Would you buy an electric tractor?

[Wesdor]

Many interesting comments. I would be interested in an electric tractor if it was cost effective. A couple of details I don't see many people addressing:
1. When we all go to electric vehicles, where is all this extra electricity going to be produced?
2. What happens to the spent batteries after 5 (10?) years of use? Do they go to a super fund site, or can they be recycled?

I believe we are at the beginning of some exciting technology. Hopefully economics and not government will drive the change.

 

[lilranch2001]

You do not hear the people pushing it talking about it because they do not want you to know they do not have those answers

 

[Hay Dude]

Many interesting comments. I would be interested in an electric tractor if it was cost effective. A couple of details I don't see many people addressing:
1. When we all go to electric vehicles, where is all this extra electricity going to be produced?
2. What happens to the spent batteries after 5 (10?) years of use? Do they go to a super fund site, or can they be recycled?

I believe we are at the beginning of some exciting technology. Hopefully economics and not government will drive the change.

I made similar points a few pages back.
If the future of transportation is going to be electrical power, that is nothing new. Electric vehicles, trains, ships have been around since the early 1900s
However, due to a lack of fully educating people, they dont understand we dont have the power grid and generation resources to accomplish it. We dont have enough power plants or recharging stations.
Nuclear power is the way to go, not solar panels or wind farms.
Until then, we will have to use more coal to recharge all those batteries.

 

[Hay Dude]

You do not hear the people pushing it talking about it because they do not want you to know they do not have those answers

^^^^^^^^^^^ X100

 

[Grumpycat]

Many interesting comments. I would be interested in an electric tractor if it was cost effective. A couple of details I don't see many people addressing:
1. When we all go to electric vehicles, where is all this extra electricity going to be produced?
2. What happens to the spent batteries after 5 (10?) years of use? Do they go to a super fund site, or can they be recycled?

I believe we are at the beginning of some exciting technology. Hopefully economics and not government will drive the change.

Utilities have so much surplus power at night they sell to industry for pennies, and implement T.O.U. billing to consumers to discourage daytime use. If the vehicle has a day’s range then there is little reason to charge (we do not recharge an EV) during the day. Tesla (and the better EVs) has an onboard scheduler that will start charging at a specified time. Is smart enough to say, “needs full charge by 6am” then it will start at appropriate time. Sounds unduly complicated but it is helpful to start with a warm battery on cold mornings.

A “heat plant” such as coal or nuclear has a very slow throttle. Takes days or weeks to get to 100%. Has to be kept hot all night whether used or not so as to be able to generate in the morning. In addition to discount rates at night they sell power very cheap for street lighting. More modern natural gas and oil plants can change output faster than coal or nuclear, but that is only useful to cut energy consumption at night.

My 7 year old battery is down to 95% of original capacity. The quality of EV batteries (with exception of Nissan LEAF) is far greater than you have been taught by starter batteries, laptop batteries, and cellphone batteries. Furthermore the battery controller works to protect the battery cells.

As for recycling, the lithium, cobalt, whatever, in EV batteries is richer than virgin ore. Furthermore my Tesla battery consists of 18 or more independent modules among which (7,100) 18650 cells are distributed. That whole thing won’t fail at once so even if the entire assembly is swapped there are plenty of parts for the salvage markets to play with. Tesla cells make excellent string trimmer and chainsaw batteries. The battery modules are precious stand-alone power sources, or useful for rebuilding Tesla batteries.

 

[lman]

You do not hear the people pushing it talking about it because they do not want you to know they do not have those answers

Their idea is to get the price of fuel and electricity so high that we will have to ride bicycles.

 

[Hay Dude]

Utilities have so much surplus power at night they sell to industry for pennies, and implement T.O.U. billing to consumers to discourage daytime use. If the vehicle has a day’s range then there is little reason to charge (we do not recharge an EV) during the day. Tesla (and the better EVs) has an onboard scheduler that will start charging at a specified time. Is smart enough to say, “needs full charge by 6am” then it will start at appropriate time. Sounds unduly complicated but it is helpful to start with a warm battery on cold mornings.

A “heat plant” such as coal or nuclear has a very slow throttle. Takes days or weeks to get to 100%. Has to be kept hot all night whether used or not so as to be able to generate in the morning. In addition to discount rates at night they sell power very cheap for street lighting. More modern natural gas and oil plants can change output faster than coal or nuclear, but that is only useful to cut energy consumption at night.

My 7 year old battery is down to 95% of original capacity. The quality of EV batteries (with exception of Nissan LEAF) is far greater than you have been taught by starter batteries, laptop batteries, and cellphone batteries. Furthermore the battery controller works to protect the battery cells.

As for recycling, the lithium, cobalt, whatever, in EV batteries is richer than virgin ore. Furthermore my Tesla battery consists of 18 or more independent modules among which (7,100) 18650 cells are distributed. That whole thing won’t fail at once so even if the entire assembly is swapped there are plenty of parts for the salvage markets to play with. Tesla cells make excellent string trimmer and chainsaw batteries. The battery modules are precious stand-alone power sources, or useful for rebuilding Tesla batteries.

Well which one is it? All I hear about is rolling brown outs and electrical shortages of energy in Kalifornia and how our electrical grid is a 1950’s era antiquated mess. We literally just removed some power lines with freakin glass insulators that looked like they were from the 1900’s telegraph era in my community and I know they wont carry the power needed for everyone in my community to be charging Teslas all night & every night.

 

[lilranch2001]

When I was working in Kalifornia East Bay 3 years ago, all the talk out there was how Tesla had to built a warehouse to hold all of the "bad" batteries they were building

 

[Tractorable]

My home state of Virginia gets 40% of its power from nuclear and 60% from coal. Nuclear is used to handle the base load and the coal plants are throttled to handle the daily load changes.

Southern Virginia has one of the largest uranium deposits in the world (the Coles Hill deposit) but it can’t be mined because Virginia banned uranium mining.

 

[ultrarunner]

One of our Docs has a
a leaf charged with home and office solar...

At least for him it is possible to have sufficient solar to more than meet his needs here in CA.