First electric tractor ride

[arrow]

Dozers are meant for one thing.. Hard pushing. So half a day and the latter half of a day on a very large extension cord. Keep in mind that the now defunct Gem of Egypt and the Silver Spade we both 100% electric powered strip mine shovels and so was the 'Big Muskie', the worlds largest dragline. They had some HUGE extension cords. Back then electricity was plentiful and cheap. Today it is neither and getting worse as demand grows.

This interested me. There are currently some battery powered shovels but these are juicing up their own batteries with a diesel engine so they are more like "hybrid plug ins".
At any rate, I can't imagine these old electric shovels being "corded". I would love to see the generator and the size of the wire utilized but can't find anything on the net about it or I should say don't know how to look for such.
I would imagine the gen sets self contained but fueled with gasoline or diesel I'm thinking.

 

[cqaigy2]

I always get a kick out of comparisons like yours where you totally disregard where the electricity originates at and how it is produced and at what environmental cost and I just don't mean the electricity to recharge but the entire picture including the rare minerals to produce the batteries and all the other parts.

Always good to put you head in the sand and cherry pick your aspects. Why I normally don't reply to comments like yours because they are based on 'tooth fairy' principles.

I've seen a few of those comparisons. One that gets left off quite often is, how much it cost to move the different types of fuels around. For instance how much diesel is used to move a gallon of gas from the refinery to the fuel station, added to the amount of fuel a vehicle uses to go get fueled up. How much energy is used to move electric to where a vehicle charges. Then add the amount of fuel used to make the facilities that generate the "fuels" etc.

 

[Schrodinger]

At the end of the “10 year guarantee” and you have to buy a new battery, will it be like the cost to replace the battery in a Chevy VOLT?

 

[thelanterns]

Salesman came buy the dealership yesterday peddling a Solectrac (spl?) tractor. The owner jumped on and rode it around for awhile. He said it was pretty smooth running, quiet and responsive. The salesman stated that this tractor would save over $12,000 in fuel costs over a similar diesel powered machine in a 10 yr period. The battery was good for that long and I asked about a battery purchase price. He didn't know the answer to that one and kept saying "it's guaranteed for 10 yrs. What tractor company do you know of that guarantees their engine for that long"?
At any rate, the tractor was good for 3-6 hrs on a charge and would charge in 8 hrs on a 220 circuit. It weighed similar to a fueled tractor of that size at 2300 lbs.
MSRP price was $28,000. Came with ags on it. Industrial and turfs were about $1500 more and a loader was about $4600.

In my opinion, It has its place for light use like on a horse farm of small garden or short driveway. If your climate gets below freezing in the winter, you have to heat up the battery with a blanket for it to take a charge. It is a lithium/iron battery that itself must be at 32*
My overall impression was that it was nice for what it was and has its place for someone.
I wouldn't buy it to save the planet as some believe electrics will but I guess its main thrust is towards convenience.
I don't think it would like pulling a 2000 lb log behind it for long or plowing out a 1000 foot driveway with 15" of snow. There is no front pto mount for it as yet..
cet-electric-tractor

The tractor industry is all going this way soon. California is banning all gas and diesel powered garden equipment over the next 10 -15 years and the rest of North America won't be far behind. They are even banning all gas powered chain saws, weed whackers etc. My Kubota dealer told us that he knows that Kubota is working on electric tractors now. So it's coming.

 

[ultrarunner]

The internal combustion engine is doomed. Electric is the only way forward. I think it's a fantastic idea.

Time will tell but I hope it is not a case of all your eggs in one basket.

Remember same from clean Nuclear is our future but forgot about waste… batteries could end the same.

Just shows that no matter how clean it will never be good enough.

Even California with total phase out isn’t counting out Internal Combustion as Hydrogen Fueled ICE is ok…

 

[Citydude]

This interested me. There are currently some battery powered shovels but these are juicing up their own batteries with a diesel engine so they are more like "hybrid plug ins".
At any rate, I can't imagine these old electric shovels being "corded". I would love to see the generator and the size of the wire utilized but can't find anything on the net about it or I should say don't know how to look for such.
I would imagine the gen sets self contained but fueled with gasoline or diesel I'm thinking.

Google P&H 4100 xpb. We had them at the mine I worked at.

 

[5030]

This interested me. There are currently some battery powered shovels but these are juicing up their own batteries with a diesel engine so they are more like "hybrid plug ins".
At any rate, I can't imagine these old electric shovels being "corded". I would love to see the generator and the size of the wire utilized but can't find anything on the net about it or I should say don't know how to look for such.
I would imagine the gen sets self contained but fueled with gasoline or diesel I'm thinking.

None of the above. They carried their 'extension cords' on large reels on the back that wound it in and out depending on how the shovel moved and they didn't move a lot, didn't have to. The cord if you want to call it that was about the size of your leg and it was run to a substation provided by the electricity supplier. If you go to You Tube and search for the 'Silver Spade', there are a few videos on there and a couple of them show the back end with the cord reels. My dad was one of the analytical chemists that worked on perfecting the high strength alloy's used in the Spade. He worked at the long gone Republic Steel and he got to be there when it was put into operation near Cadiz, Ohio and I got to tag along when I was a kid.

I still remember it quite well actually. it made no noise other than the cables winding up on the drums and some squeaking it was basically a silent giant. it was so big it had an elevator inside in the center so you could get to the upper floors. Had it's own machine shop and cafeteria for the workers on it. Just the crawler tracks were 15 feet high and if I remember correctly, there were 6 sets of them. I believe Bucyrus-Erie made the tracks and designed the entire machine and put it together.

The operator sat in a cab that stuck out from the side of the main house so he could see everything and the bucket was big enough to put a 2 story house in with room to spare.

All it did was remove the overburden so the coal seam was exposed to be removed.

If I'm not mistaken, quite a few of the BE shovels of that day were also electric powered.

Do a YT search for it. There are a few good video's of it in action and one about how it was dismantled or should I say blown apart. Big Muskie suffered the same fate (blown apart with shaped charges and scrapped).

The Spade, Muskie and Gem of Egypt really laid waste to the area surrounding Cadiz, Ohio. That was prior to reclamation being enacted.

 

[5030]

Google P&H 4100 xpb. We had them at the mine I worked at.

Small potatoes compared to the 'Big 3'...

 

[MossRoad]

None of the above. They carried their 'extension cords' on large reels on the back that wound it in and out depending on how the shovel moved and they didn't move a lot, didn't have to. The cord if you want to call it that was about the size of your leg and it was run to a substation provided by the electricity supplier. If you go to You Tube and search for the 'Silver Spade', there are a few videos on there and a couple of them show the back end with the cord reels. My dad was one of the analytical chemists that worked on perfecting the high strength alloy's used in the Spade. He worked at the long gone Republic Steel and he got to be there when it was put into operation near Cadiz, Ohio and I got to tag along when I was a kid.

I still remember it quite well actually. it made no noise other than the cables winding up on the drums and some squeaking it was basically a silent giant. it was so big it had an elevator inside in the center so you could get to the upper floors. Had it's own machine shop and cafeteria for the workers on it. Just the crawler tracks were 15 feet high and if I remember correctly, there were 6 sets of them. I believe Bucyrus-Erie made the tracks and designed the entire machine and put it together.

The operator sat in a cab that stuck out from the side of the main house so he could see everything and the bucket was big enough to put a 2 story house in with room to spare.

All it did was remove the overburden so the coal seam was exposed to be removed.

If I'm not mistaken, quite a few of the BE shovels of that day were also electric powered.

Do a YT search for it. There are a few good video's of it in action and one about how it was dismantled or should I say blown apart. Big Muskie suffered the same fate (blown apart with shaped charges and scrapped).

The Spade, Muskie and Gem of Egypt really laid waste to the area surrounding Cadiz, Ohio. That was prior to reclamation being enacted.

The Silver Spade had 8 crawlers - one double crawler on each corner. They were about 8' high.

 

[5030]

When I was a little tyke they seemed like 16 feet....

I still remember coming up on it. Dad was driving and I was gawking. All you could see was the top of the stick over the piles of dirt and rocks. Until you got down to where it was you (at least I) didn't have a clue how big it was.

I remember when they drove it over Interstate 77 too. They piled dirt I think 16 feet deep over the interstate so they could drive it across.

Machines of a long gone era.