Some one wanted to know if we'd buy an EV tractor

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   / Some one wanted to know if we'd buy an EV tractor
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#3  
Some day you will have to
Will have to. That doesn't sound very cricket.
Maybe by then, they will have figured it out. There's no way I'd have flown the first airplanes either.
But then, that time may not come. There are always other technologies. Maybe some one will invent the perfect rubber band engine.
 
   / Some one wanted to know if we'd buy an EV tractor #4  
The theory is great, but the engineering isn't here yet. Infinite speed with no transmission gears and battery adds weight. But, unlike a car, there will have to be a way to cool the electric motor or motors. Batteries will have to have 8-10 hour life. And the price will have to be comparable..... without subsidies.
 
   / Some one wanted to know if we'd buy an EV tractor #6  
   / Some one wanted to know if we'd buy an EV tractor #7  
Relatively minor inconvenience when you consider the stop driving at all order issued by Mercedes on some of their vehicles recently.
 
   / Some one wanted to know if we'd buy an EV tractor #8  
The theory is great, but the engineering isn't here yet. Infinite speed with no transmission gears and battery adds weight. But, unlike a car, there will have to be a way to cool the electric motor or motors. Batteries will have to have 8-10 hour life. And the price will have to be comparable..... without subsidies.
The current engineering is in line with the technology...that is what isn't here yet...and it may be a while before it is...
Especially when recharging still requires fossil fuels... not to mention the energy required to manufacture the batteries etc...those that buy EVs thinking they are saving the planet are badly mistaken...The first law of thermodynamics applies...
 
   / Some one wanted to know if we'd buy an EV tractor #9  
Hell no


Running anything except for a small compact tractor for a short period of time from a battery will be completely impractical due to the weight and cost of the battery, the amount of current you will draw to feed the charger to recharge the battery in a reasonable time period, and the huge demands this will put on the utility distribution and generation infrastructure. A day of cutting hay with a typical disc mower-conditioner or baling with a decent sized round baler (requiring ~100 HP) will require at least a megawatt-hour of battery, which is about 10 times the size of a large battery-powered car battery and would need the equivalent of roughly a thousand amps of 240 volt single phase to charge that battery overnight so you can work again tomorrow. It will take about the same amount of electricity to charge that battery just once as an average house uses in an entire month as well. And that is only a 100 HP tractor, which is pretty small as far as ag tractors go, and only one of them being run at a time. The guy across the highway from me who farms for a living and has about 10 tractors, some of which are 300+ HP center-articulated units, a couple combines, semis, a swather, sprayer, etc. would take several dozen MWH per day during fieldwork and would take roughly the entire output of the nearest substation (about 5 MW) just to power his chargers. And then those megawatt-hours of electricity have to come from somewhere. The utility here has so far kept the lights on but we've already gotten e-mails to reduce usage on certain days in order to try to prevent rolling blackouts. There is no way you can add that enormous demand to the already insufficient system, absolutely no way at all.
 
   / Some one wanted to know if we'd buy an EV tractor #10  
nope
 
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