Any pricing yet on the new E tractors?

[Camofurever1]

Has anyone actually owned one? In theory, electric makes perfect sense for something like farm equipment. You can easily determine the daily use and size the battery system to match. Something like a combine or larger commercial farm tractor gets driven at a fairly constant speed for 8 or however many hours a day then back to the barn/shed overnight.

Now for a compact utility tractor, it's a bit more difficult because daily use varies. Also there is a more sensitive price point.

Anywho ....my real question is has anyone actually owned something like a solectrac? One has popped up on my local Facebook and I'm curious but also I don't know if taking the risk is going to be worthwhile.

Solectrac is is a defunct company. They never really made it out of the starting gate before they let the business fail, stiffing the creditors and the few customers and dealers that decided to invest in them to begin with. My understanding is they took the government grants and ran, kind of like a bunch of solar manufacturers did during the Obuma administration did. No warranty service, no parts, dealers had an inventory they couldn't sell and there was no manufacturer to send them back to.

Grain farming isn't a set schedule of so many hours a day. It schedule is set solely on the weather, both Spring and Fall. It is usually a mad rush to get the fields tilled as soon as they dry and then get the crops in the ground. A lot of farm work occurs around the clock to accomplish that. Same with harvest. It's a mad dash and all hands on deck 24/7 to get the crops harvested as soon as the moisture content drops enough and to beat the fall rains. You can't pull a battery charger out to the field and top off batteries in 10 minutes so you can keep rolling like you can with a diesel fuel trailer. Also, what if the machine breaks down in the field, or worse yet, gets stuck in the field? It can take hours to days to get a stuck tractor or combine with a big grain header pulled out of deep mud. If the batteries run out, now you are trying to pull tons of dead weight out of the mud. It just isn't feasible for a medium or large scale farm. It might work on a gentlemen's farm, or hobby farm, as you don't have tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in a seasonal crop. It's a calculated risk.

I would run from that Solectrac tractor you saw on Facebook. You can't get parts for it. There is no dealer support. There is no factory to get parts or warranty service from. That's why the guy on Facebook is trying to unload it.

 

[Bavarian]

Has anyone actually owned one? In theory, electric makes perfect sense for something like farm equipment. You can easily determine the daily use and size the battery system to match. Something like a combine or larger commercial farm tractor gets driven at a fairly constant speed for 8 or however many hours a day then back to the barn/shed overnight.

Now for a compact utility tractor, it's a bit more difficult because daily use varies. Also there is a more sensitive price point.

Anywho ....my real question is has anyone actually owned something like a solectrac? One has popped up on my local Facebook and I'm curious but also I don't know if taking the risk is going to be worthwhile.

Eight hour workday on a farm?
This illusion doesn't exist.

A while back, I dug into the JD battery tractor.
If I remember correctly, the batteries last for about 25 miles on the road for the tractor only.
I got my hay bales from about such distance. How should this work?
I can tell you right away, it doesn't work at all.