Solis SV24 Electric tractor - Here is what we know so far...

[2manyrocks]

Does anyone know what batteries they are actually using in the Solis? Commonly available or proprietary?

 

[Torvy]

Battery operated vehicles are definitely niche. For tractors, it seems they need to focus on the 1 acre suburban market. Basically little more than a lawn tractor.

for cars, it is definitely a city thing and/or people who don't want/need to travel. Maybe it is just a 2nd commuter car. Also appeals more to the type of person who is going to keep any car for no more than 10 years. There are still many people out there who get a new car every few years. Especially those who lease.

The recent cold snap is not going to do much for EV sales up north. When we had our various hybrids, there was definitely a temperature sweet spot. Too hot or too cold and you could see the performance decline on the battery. Not a big deal in a hybrid, but pure EV it can leave you stranded.

 

[Torvy]

Does anyone know what batteries they are actually using in the Solis? Commonly available or proprietary?

Eveready AA, + a 9V for startup.

 

[CH4Ohio]

Gasoline engines are in the 25-30% efficient range today. Diesel is better, but still only 30-35%. An electric motor is about 90% efficient. In addition, my house can be my fueling station, so I don't have to run out and fill cans any more.

This is the main fallacy with the whole "green deal" push . . . The premise that electricity just magically comes out of the wall at no cost.

Electric motors are, in fact, very efficient as measured at the point of use. But how efficient is the battery? We also can't neglect the efficiency at the power generating plant, the cost to get fuel to that plant, the loss due to resistance in transmitting the power to point of use, etc.

The net hydrocarbon/fossil fuel usage is the same either way. EV cars and EV tractors still run on coal, methane, hydro, nuclear, and just a tiny bit of wind/solar (less than 2%). But with an IC engine, you avoid the need to STORE and RECHARGE your energy in an expensive inefficient battery.

 

[macindude]

Then today I read about the Teslas in Chicago totally dead all around the city. People are stranded and paying big money at the downtown hotels till it warms up. One guy paid a towing company to move his EV vehicle to Milwaukee.

As usual, though, most of this is overblown by the media, who loves a clickbait headline, especially one related to Teslas.

In reality, what I'm hearing in the community is that people were parking outside (letting the battery get cold soaked) at low state of charge, and then running to the supercharger with a cold, dead battery and not enough energy left to warm it up sufficiently to charge safely.

I'm in Wisconsin, and it's cold AF here too (colder than Chicago), and I haven't heard any complaints locally. I'm guessing that's because Chicago is a big city with lots of apartment dwellers who park outside and go to a Supercharger once a week to charge. This really isn't a good use case for an EV, but some folks do it, mostly in California where the temps don't really matter.

Also, Norway is extremely cold and they have a higher proportion of EV sales than anywhere in the world (over 50%), yet they don't have this problem - However, they do have MUCH better charging infrastructure than we have here, with street light poles containing chargers for people parking on the street. It's not that it can't be done, we just haven't done it here yet.

People living in apartments or who otherwise need to park on the street are going to be the last people for whom an EV makes sense, because of this very issue with cold batteries at low states of charge, and we're going to need solutions like light pole charging before EVs make sense for that demographic.

I watched the Tractor Time with Tim video on YouTube where he was mowing with Solis battery tractor. I think it was a 5 foot flail mower, so nothing huge. Going slow, he had enough power to get a nice cut, but if he sped up, the cut deteriorated. It didn't have enough power at full charge to give a good cut on short grass.

The tractor lasted about two hours of mowing and he was in limp mode getting back to his shop. He wasn't able to mow the entire field. I don't remember how long it will take to recharge it so he can mow for another two hours, and I don't know how many times he'll have to charge it to mow the entire field.

Yeah, I saw that one too. To me, that's a poorly designed tractor. There's nothing inherently less powerful about an electric motor, but the motor and battery need to be designed with the application in mind, both the amount of power required and the desired runtime.

Also, for clarity, the one he's using is a Solectrac, not a Solis. So there's a chance the Solis has motors and batteries better suited for a tractor application.

With the cold weather, another concern has come up. How much damage to the battery does the cold cause? What happens when the battery can't hold a charge anymore? Who is gonna buy a used battery powered tractor? Why would you?

Generally speaking, heat causes far more damage to lithium batteries than cold does. Cold merely limits power and endurance while the battery is cold; once it heats up it's back to normal with no permanent effect. This is another area where engineering is important, as a battery management system that keeps the battery cells in the right temperature ranges is going to make a massive difference in both utility and longevity.

What about years of battery life ??
When I do a search of ev battery life I'm seeing 10-15 years or 15-20 years.

And EVs with lithium batteries weren't even a thing until about 13 years ago, so those numbers are all guesses.

In reality, some hard lessons were learned early on - For example, Nissan had to replace a bunch of early Leaf batteries under warranty because they used a chemistry that was particularly susceptible to heat damage and they did not use a liquid cooling system on their batteries, so vehicles in hot climates like Phoenix went dead pretty quick. GM also had some manufacturing issues with the batteries on the Chevy Bolt (more on that below) that resulted in a large number of warranty replacements.

Other than that, battery replacement on BEVs isn't really much of a thing at this point, because there are very few that have needed it aside from the issues mentioned above. In addition, there usually isn't a reason to just outright replace the entire battery pack. GM doesn't even sell whole battery packs any more, just individual modules. If you have an issue, the tech isolates it to the faulty module and replaces that module.

Some of the earliest hybrids such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight that are 25 years old and didn't even use Lithium batteries are getting to the point where people want a battery replacement, and there are a few shops that have opened up to serve that market. In another 20 years, I would expect those shops and plenty more to do aftermarket battery replacements.

What happens in 15 years and the battery is junk and replacement cost is equal to or more than the value of the vehicle.
Then what throw the vehicle away??

By the time battery replacements are necessary, it's highly likely that they will be far cheaper than they are today, and offer faster charging and more storage. 5 years ago, you could buy a brand new entire Tesla Model 3 car for about the same price as a Tesla Model S battery cost 10 years ago, and the prices have continued downwards.

Finally, a "dead" battery isn't really dead. It has either degraded to the point where it's not useful in the intended application, or it has a bad cell. In either case, it still has lots of value - For example, a battery that is no longer useful in a car can easily still be used in a fixed storage application where the lowered energy density doesn't matter. Or, the pack can be split into modules or cells and reused - A friend of mine does a lot with used EV batteries, he has built several electric motorcycles and is currently electrifying an International 300 tractor.

He said, 80% capacity at 750,000 miles.

What he didn't say was, at ambient temps. Who has ambient temps all year round ? We are in the negatives for over a week, and the low is double negatives. I've seen NO EVs on the road right now.

The cold kills the battery life, as in decade years to a few years. That 750,000 will drop like a rock for the full life of the battery.

I live in Wisconsin. There's plenty of EVs on the road, and nobody I know has ceased using them in the cold.

In fact, the colder it gets, the happier I am that I have my Tesla. The heater is fantastic and the cabin goes from 20ºF to 70ºF in two minutes flat - I don't have to wait for an engine block to warm up, after all! I also leave home with a full "tank" every time and in the event I were to get stranded, the car can stay warm for several days on a single charge with no worries about carbon monoxide.

Yes, range is reduced, but only by maybe 20% if I park in my (unheated, but warmer than outside) garage, more like 30-35% if it's been parked outside in this crazy cold we've had lately. Tesla has done a lot of work to minimize range loss in cold weather, so this is better than other EVs do. Again, it all comes down to design and engineering.

The batteries are so dangerous, they don't even want you to park your EV in the garage.

Not true at all. This was only true of the Chevy Bolt after they found that two manufacturing defects, if they happened on the same cell, were causing some batteries, when charged to 100%, to experience thermal runaway and light on fire. They have since rectified that issue. They replaced all batteries from the 2017-2019 Bolts as a result, and some on newer cars until they figured out a way to detect the defects in software.

Looking at used prices for Tesla's, it seems that the price is half of new ones, once they break 50,000 miles. A few with over 100,000 miles are really, really cheap!!!

That has little or nothing to do with batteries, though, and everything to do with Tesla's price fluctuations with the post-Covid supply chain nonsense and their increasing profitability. Not to mention, any old ICE car is going to be at half its value at 50,000 miles or less too... Really, car values and tractor values do not behave the same way at all.

Battery operated vehicles are definitely niche. For tractors, it seems they need to focus on the 1 acre suburban market. Basically little more than a lawn tractor.

Exactly. I don't think anything bigger than a SCUT is feasible in a fully electric form today.

for cars, it is definitely a city thing and/or people who don't want/need to travel. Maybe it is just a 2nd commuter car.

Today, I'd say, yes and no. IMO, anyone who wants to travel with an EV today needs a Tesla. Their Supercharger network is far and away more convenient, better maintained, and faster than the others. However, last year they switched from calling it a "Tesla plug" and started calling it NACS, the North American Charging Standard, and at this point every major auto manufacturer has announced that they will be adopting NACS charging in the 2024-2026 timeframe. That's a game changer.

I don't hesitate to travel with my Tesla. I never went farther than about 1.5 hours away from home with any of my previous EVs.

 

[macindude]

This is the main fallacy with the whole "green deal" push . . . The premise that electricity just magically comes out of the wall at no cost.

Electric motors are, in fact, very efficient as measured at the point of use. But how efficient is the battery? We also can't neglect the efficiency at the power generating plant, the cost to get fuel to that plant, the loss due to resistance in transmitting the power to point of use, etc.

I started to type about that, but then realized my post was already way too long! But you make a good point.

Charging efficiency depends on voltage. Using a standard 120V outlet, you get about 75%-80% efficiency. Using 240V, it's 90% or a little better. At 90% efficiency, you'll get 9kWh into the battery for every 10kWh you get from the wall (and pay for) with the last kWh being lost to waste heat (though in my garage in the winter, it's not truly wasted! . So, you're still at 81% efficiency from the wall.

You can then look upstream at distribution efficiency, power plant efficiency, extraction and distribution of fuels for the power plant, etc... But there are so many variables, and they vary quite a bit wider, that the answer to the overall efficiency is "it depends".

The net hydrocarbon/fossil fuel usage is the same either way. EV cars and EV tractors still run on coal, methane, hydro, nuclear, and just a tiny bit of wind/solar (less than 2%). But with an IC engine, you avoid the need to STORE and RECHARGE your energy in an expensive inefficient battery.

But now YOU are ignoring all of the upstream inefficiencies inherent to fossil fuels as well - Fuel doesn't magically appear in a can in my garage either! I have to throw a can or two in my car, drive somewhere, and pump it. And for it to get there, it had to be driven on a truck from a terminal somewhere. And to get to the terminal, it had to be pumped hundreds or thousands of miles from a refinery.

Then, there's the energy used in refining the fuel. 85% of the energy doesn't come from electricity, but the 15% that does comes out to at least 0.2kWh per gallon of fuel; most of the other 85% comes from burning fossil fuels.

And, of course, there's extraction of crude oil which in itself is very energy intense, plus transportation to the refinery.

I have not yet seen a full "well-to-wheel" analysis of energy efficiency for either ICE or EVs, and I don't think such a thing exists at this point... But given all of the above, I'm pretty comfortable saying that an EV is still overall more efficient.

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

Question. The Solectrac company seems to have gone under, with the first real marketed electric tractor. They said the PTO HP was only like 12-13hp?? So the tractor was rated at 25, but the PTO was half of that.
What is the PTO HP on the Solis unit?

 

[Hardy Brothers Outdoors]

Question. The Solectrac company seems to have gone under, with the first real marketed electric tractor. They said the PTO HP was only like 12-13hp?? So the tractor was rated at 25, but the PTO was half of that.
What is the PTO HP on the Solis unit?

So it is my understanding that the Solis electric tractor has the same PTO output as the H26 diesel engine, so I believe it is 18.9 HP.

 

[DarkBlack]

The battery on my car is supposed to still have 80% capacity at 750,000 miles. It will outlast me.

Sorry, but that “supposed to” figure, is utter B.S.

 

[Hardy Brothers Outdoors]

Does anyone know what batteries they are actually using in the Solis? Commonly available or proprietary?

I am not sure but am suppose to learn more soon and will likely be testing this tractor this Spring on my property in Ohio.