He mentioned "Anaerobic digesters" (timestamp 8:29), may I suggest a Fully Charge episode on Anaerobic digesters, because you don't hear much about that. A while ago I read something about a dio-digester which would be sent out to the third world and someone with 4 cows would have enough gas from that to cook. But if you can make electricity from that it would be cool. You could even put it through a fuel cell. This is the sort of tech that can be used when their is extra demand for power, not just when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.
Biogas is quite dirty so the amount of energy etc to make it clean enough for a fuel cell probably would make that prohibitive, a combustion engine is what they normally use, and can in a way be efficient if you use the waste heat for something useful. The co2 from it could even be used to enrich the air in greenhouses
@@backacheache I don't think you understand what I was referring to. When a cow goes the toilet it doesn't cost any energy, if you want to pick it all up from a field that would be a problem but if they are in a cow shed for the winter then it's got to be deal with anyway. So you put the cow poo poo in a container and it creates methain (or however you spell it), that can then go directly into a fuel cell. I know fuel cells are associated with hydrogen, but you can put different gases in them. And then you get electricity.
@@matthewbaynham6286 I do understand, the point is the gases in a fuel cell have to be very pure, and the methane from a digester would need expensive processing to meet the required grade
This is great to see. What the average viewer might not realise is that tractors of this size are generally used inside buildings and greenhouses. In other words confined spaces. They are even used inside tunnels by the construction industry. Most people associate farming and tractors with big open wide spaces but this is often not the case. Certainly for small farm machinery anyway.
Great to see movement to elec in small farm vehicles, hope there are more on the market since this filming. The giant vehicles are going to be a much bigger challenge and I don't see an easy solution. Something like 10MWhr of elec juice would be required to run one combine for a 12hour shift. No farm like Adam's will have a power connection this large. You'd need a relay of trucks with pre-charged batteries on board from Aggreko arriving in rota as the grain gets shipped out! We'll need to think out the box for this one...
That's pretty much exactly what this tractor is in its scale. It has about the same horsepower and the same 7-hour runtime. As the (eloquent) Adam Henson says... "... But it's tiny..." If you look here at the Laura Farms channel, youtube.com/@LauraFarms you can see the scale of a modern operation, which she actually describes as "small." Some of her machines take 260 gallons of diesel to fill the tank - that doesn't last them the day - AND they think it's worth their while taking a dedicated diesel filling trailer to the harvest field to minimise the downtime. Converted to electric, some of these machines actually run at 500 kW. That's not 500 kW for 5 seconds like a Tesla or a Porsche, but flat out, all day! That means they would use up the battery in the new Tesla semi in 2 hours. The only way to get these big machines electric is via battery swap - and probably battery swap in the field, while moving along. That's the way the combines unload the grain. The challenge is just huge.
@@londonwestman1 I totally agree that it would be very hard to scale up for the prairies of Europe and America but there are lots and lots of small farms that would see the same revolution in farming that the little grey Fergie offred in the 40s. These small farms use animal power even now.
China is already producing electric combine harvesters. They are smaller than European harvesters but they are automated and operate as a group. Very clever. Especially when farmers could generate their own electricity with windmills.
@@kylekleman Unfortunately no. I saw it on a CGTN video. They used drones and marked out fields and let the harvesters operate autonomously as a group. It would have been during the harvest.
@@kylekleman I did see a couple of videos on the use of drones for crop spraying which might possibly be of interest to you. They were on The New Atlas channel 4 months ago.
Thanks for coverings this I wasn't sure where we were up to as far as electrifying agriculture, its clear we have a long way to go, but its great we are off the mark now.
I can imagine this being used at sites like the national trust were the peace and quiet would be invaluable plus for events (or just for power tools) it can be used as a mobile electricity supply
NT have one of these at Greenway in Devon. They kindly let me have a test drive on it about a year ago before I bought one. I think they said there were another 4 on order for other properties at that time. It’s a great little tractor, but with supply chain issues took 9 months from time of order to arrive from India which was frustrating. As said in the video it’s made for small holdings, large greenhouses, estate work etc not for farming and it meets these needs really well. I’m with Robert on the reversing noise though - so loud and annoying!
@@Devondabbler I stayed at a holiday park in France where the groundstaff just used electric vehicles and tools, it was perfect for allowing the staff to work and the guests to sleep, I can imagine them (and places like them) using one of these
Possibly just suit my 20 acre hobby farm in Queensland Australia. I'm using a two metre wide flail mower for half a day once a month to cut grassed areas. I'm guessing this would take three charge cycles or more to do the same job. Not paying over $2 a litre is a great incentive when I already have 47kW of solar in a sunny climate. For farms where a large tractor needs to run 12 or 24 hours a day several times a year, I think large swappable batteries could be leased? Even with a 200 amp supply to the property and half that again in solar, you'd be pushing it to keep a very large electric tractor supplied with enough charged batteries.
It will be interesting to see how (or if) electric farm vehicles become the norm. Can't see why Quads and the like aren't there already, but for bigger equipment there are huge hurdles, there's a reason they burn so much deisel, unlike cars they often work at or near maximum power, and seven hours is of little use to most contractors, as the saying goes "make hay while the sun shines". You might think "well that's fine just add more batteries", not that simple, soil compaction is already a problem.
To encourage farmers, if I was in Government, I would put in place a subsidy that would pay for the battery pack over the expected life of the tractor. Put solar on all the south facing farm buildings, and introduce a charging network on the farm that can be shared by the public at the road side.
Fendt the German Tractor manufacturer has had on sale the First medium size fully electric EV tractor in production for the past two years , the Model is the Fendt e100 Vario which can operate at full power with implements from its rear PTO (power take off ) for 5 consecutive hours and will charge to 80% charge in 40 minutes it also has an enclosed cab with air conditioning
so 30 min travel from charge station to field and then 4 hr work then 30 min from field to charge station. There aren't charging stations at the edge of each field and it would cost too much to put them in. For a small, maybe 40 to 60 acre farm, I can easily see the electric tractor being practical. 4 hr and the whole place can be mowed. A few days and you could plow it. for my 11 acres, that compact electric could be practical... For the huge farm that one guy has 2 combines to deal with harvesting before the grain spoils... the stopping to recharge would rot 1/3 of the crop.
Avant are already in the market with their e series loaders. They’re fairly small but that’s Avant’s sector of the market anyway. Since it’s basically a hydraulic / hydrostatic system it’s essentially using an electric motor for a pump, but with proper weight distribution it’s one time battery weight can be an advantage.
Great application for electric vehicles! It'll reduce this farmer's operating expenses, maintenance expenses, and overall emissions all at once. So exciting to see this kind of progress.
It's many years ago I heard about electric tractors first time! It was someone in USA making them. I think it was still kind of mostly "hand build" - so small scale, but big enough he was selling them! They were talking about how the the weight that was normally a con with EVs was a plus for tractors, as you needed weight to get traction in a muddy field. And the fact it was small was also nice and making a lot of stuff easier! It was an audio podcast, but I imagined it kind of the same size as the little Massey Ferguson... The old grey ones that we got a lot of in EU after WW2.... The way they made it sound, and one of the was a farmer who had bought one, was that anything else was straight up dumb!
@@MattOGormanSmith excellent point. Even if it's a new tractor and nothing leaks, the exhaust particles will definitely find their onto the produce. I'm washing my veggies a bit better from now on...
Bi-directional charging? Here's a vehicle that won't get a ton of use for much of the time and could always be plugged in at night. Great to have as both a big battery and a funky ride on mower...
would make a good scraper tracter for tom pemberton still think fuel cell is the way to go on the bigger stuff and trucks hopaly we will see more of that in the coming years
So frustrating for many rural businesses such as farms with large rooftop solar potential, that they're often not able to fully realise that potential simply because many of the local DNO's aren't set up to accept such high levels of power inputs. Adam's farm looks as though it could easily generate 2-3× the amount of solar power they're currently generating. Farms are always looking to diversify their income but when it comes to renewables generation exports, they're simply not getting the kind of support necessary.
@@andrewradford3953 Yes, you can. But on a farm like Adam's, where his current system is a 50kW one - or more - should he ever want to enlarge it substantially, some of the only ways you (may) soak up that kind of extra juice is if you've got a large milking shed or possibly poultry/pig set-up and not every rural business/farm has those.
There must be standards for battery modules where the farmer can buy the machines required and as many battery modules as needed with a charging station. This may reduce costs and allow devices to run for longer by hot-swapping batteries.
You might Google up soil compaction. Far more "important" than was realised only a few ago. Kew Gardens did a project on soil compaction following a tree being blown down in a gale. Plenty online if arsed.
Similar follow up from one on Roberts videos like this one. Robert was talking to the CEO think Scottish Power about EV charging stations. He said central Scotland on edge of Perth needed EV Station but cost of getting power there was too expensive.. Now its going ahead. The largest charging station in Scotland..
What's strange is how the kept the hood shape that's designed to house a gasoline engine even though changing the shape would allow to install more batteries
I'm guessing that charging bigger equipment would take too long than just with 240V AC. Perhaps standardized modular battery packs that could be swapped between equipment could help when days are long and there isn't 8 hours for a small tractor, or what? 36 hours for a combine?
That is not a Tractor , that is a toy. I live in the farming belt of America. People have no idea of the size of equipment used in farming. The added weight of the needed batteries is going to be a problem when you scale it up. Farms in America are 8, 10, 12,000 acres. The equipment has to be hauled in pieces by semi to get it from a to b. I think Hydrogen is the use case for replacing Diesel equipment for farming.
It's definitely NOT a toy. OK, it's small, but such vehicles have a place in small farms and recreational facilities. If an owner can generate their own electricity thereby saving fuel costs, they will offset the higher initial expense. As more and more electric vehicles come on the market prices will inevitably be reduced.
Weight is not really a big problem for a tractor! And due to the way electric works, they don't have to be so big in order to do the same work! Just because something is one way now, doesn't mean it is the only way, or that every thing has to be exactly the same! There is a lot of potiential in electric tractors!
Burning hydrogen in an ice is a dumb idea. For the same work as could be done in a pure ev machine, 3-5x more electricity needs to be generated to produce the hydrogen compress it, transport it, and the final inefficient ice.
What worries me is soil compaction. EVs are heavier than normal vehicles and I worry that this would be tough on the soil. BUT hoping that solid-state batteries will help to change that.
Whenever you get up to the industrial size electric tractors and combines, you would have huge batteries that you could use to power your house when they are not otherwise working like the Ford F150 Lightning
Cricket pitches needs a lot of rolling - in the summer my local cricket club rolls their pitches with a ICE powered machine - those volunteers who do this work would extend their lives with an electric version of that cricket roller. Hopefully some day soon. Like wise golf club grass cutting machinery.
I don't suppose many local cricket clubs have 25k to spend on a new tractor unfortunately. Tho I suppose most golf courses could afford to invest in some and in my opinion should.
Commercial rates for electricity are more expensive than residential, my neighbour farmer is paying 98 pence per kw! It will be a long time before things go electric with the initial price being so much higher and running costs being more expensive with current electricity rates.
There certainly are places an electric tractor could be useful. But forget the idea of electric power in combines and support vehicles (tractors and trucks) during major harvest. They have to run virtually 24-7 for 3 to 6 weeks.
Does the U.K. really subsidize the cost of diesel fuel for farm tractors? If so, this seems like something that would hinder the switch to electricity, which is presumably not subsidized.
my car has electric power steering. seems like that would use it too. running a pump all the time has to be a battery suck. and no solar panels on top?
farm barns fitted with solar, and multiple wind turbines out in the fields, then exchangeable batteries for tractors would be on another level. you wouldn't need storage batteries, you would just switch out the tractor ones as storage.
Big machines are currently used because of lack of skilled farm operators but when automation comes to fruition, the need for big tractors will decrease and lots of small machines can be utilised (robotic fleet) and therefore lots of smaller batteries rather than trying to produce bigger batteries for bigger machines..........additionally, using hydrogen powered farm equipment (see JCB hydrogen video's)
Burning hydrogen in an ice is a dumb idea. For the same work as could be done in a pure ev machine, 3-5x more electricity needs to be generated to produce the hydrogen compress it, transport it, and the final inefficient ice.
If the battery costs £2000 then how come the ev version is £8000 more than the diesel diesel tractor ? the two electric motors ect shouldn't be more than £6000.
The good thing about changing to electric for things like tractors is that the larger the vehicle is, the easier it is to design around the need for batteries. Getting enough power from the electric motors is no issue in real terms, its all about the cost of those batteries which is bound to improve over time and what you need to charge it. While you coud get away with charging a smaller unit like the one shown here from a regular socket, you would definately need at least a fast-charger working off a 3-phase supply for the bigger machinery.
Well CATL just dropped their battery costs to capture more market so these should be easier to make by cost. But that assumes playing the same game as the system wants you to play. Why doesn't the government subsidy food more by paying for the gear it takes to plant and pick?
Despite the new clean tech I'm not convinced that shedding the weeds is better for insects and other animals living and hiding among the plants than cutting them down at ground level with a scythe. At least animals would have a chance to survive and time to escape.
I would imagine that this would be a great application for interchangeable battery modules. The batteries would be staged around the farm at carefully planned locations. As the tractor/combine battery becomes depleted they would pull into the strategically located battery barn and swap in a fully charged unit. The battery left behind would immediately begin recharging. Yes it would be expensive to set up but this is exactly the sort of thing that can be aided with government assistance programs - and not just big commercial farmers, but the little ones too. We're undergoing a paradigm shift in energy distribution. We've done it before with electricity and the government helped with that (in the US at least). They also helped with building out the phone system as well. Oh yeah, highway system too. This would not be any different and actually is a lot more critically important.
driving to a battery is a waste of time. Battery should bedriven to a tractor/combine to the spot where the battery gets depleted. With combines it is a bit easier though. A vehicle with large battery can come up from behind and plug-in to charge it on the go. Similar to when trucks driving in parallel and being filled with grain.
Tens of thousands of $ per battery for the large tractors... possibly $100k + for the combine battery. Deere S790 Combine is 543 hp. Roughly 50,0000 watts. 50 killowatt-hr of battery per hr you want it to run. A combine battery would weigh a few tons... You aren't changing it in less than an hr average even if it's designed for fast swapping.
This is a tricky subject as animal agriculture is the climate change elephant in the room 51% of all global emissions, more than all forms of transportation combined. That’s also not even talking about the insane level of land clearing, and the fact that it polluted nearby rivers. And yet nobody ever talks it
Considering how much diesel tractor users probably burn through this can only be a good thing - sadly I reckon a lot of the old school farm types have the same negative mindset like those that hate on PV and heat pumps. Scale (battery pack), charging and runtime is likely going to be the limiting factor at the moment I imagine…
With tractors it's a bit different than with cars. 6-7 motor hours is less than half-time. During seeding and harvest all this heavy machinery runs sunrise to sunset and even longer if climate allows. Most likely, driver finishing the day is not going to be the same as the one starting it. But when weather window opens up, those machines run non-stop. There are no rapid chargers in the middle of the field, and they can't afford to stop for few hours to charge. So no surprise that even the most progressive farmers will be skeptical. You don't need 1000km battery in a family hatchback, but you need 18 hour battery in a tractor.
If farmers completely covered all their build roofs with solar, & installed large house batteries / power walls, then it would reduce the fuel cost from being insanely high with dirty fossil fuels, to being ZERO with 100% electric machines. They could even sell excess electricity to the mains grid! And of course, agrivoltaics have been proven to not lower food production, which generating HUGE amount of solar electricity from farmland, worth more in income the even the food, without reducing it!
☹ While you tube states this as a new video. - is this not the same video put up on Fully charged main channel 12 month ago? is "Everything Electric" to be you tube version of Dave???
I think the only way electric can work on bigger tractors is to have swappable batteries with high speed charging, so you can swap over once or twice a day. Running a tractor is one thing but running a PTO to drive another machine behind will always be a big ask for a battery pack.
Farmers can do solar, wind, and water harvesting from their sheds as well. Offcourse not all vehicles in the farm needs to be electric but I am sure their future transport to replace Land Rovers could be EV 's powered by their own generated electricity.
The solution for large open areas of arable land is not battery but tethered electric. Just as the mining industry has used for decades, you have a small battery for basic to-ing and fro-ing but once in a field, you hook up to the mains and lay out a cable as you go one way and wind it back in on the return. It's not exactly rocket science.
As with the whole alternative energy and EV world, the bottleneck is batteries; their cost and size/weight to energy density ratio. Probably we're about to see breakthroughs in battery tech that help to bring EV costs to par with ICE equivalents. THEN, but not before, even heavy equipment will be battery-powered,
One exciting possibility with electric tractors is the possible elimination of the mechanical PTO, which together with the power take on contraptions on the machinery is complicated, dangerous, unreliable and inefficient. Powering the machinery with a built-in electric motor, powered from the battery of the host tractor could be revolutionary. Of course, there is a lot of investment in the attachments, so it will take a while for these to reach obsolescence, but it will happen.
This is an old video disappointing thought it would be at least an update of where these tractors were being used. Let's be realistic about the amount of power required to do agricultural work. During peak working times these would need to run up to 16 hours a day with power Up to 200kW. Batteries and costs will have to improve a lot before it will be viable.
Given the diminutive size it is not really a serious farm tractor, but possibly might make more sense for large industrial green house operations where diesel power is problematic - even if the price differential is significant. Living on a commercial farm myself, I think the challenge for electric powered tractors and combines is the way these get used in terms of available crop and weather windows - so when harvesting you need to be running combines and tractors close to 24 hours a day and so losing a chunk of time recharging the sort of battery size required for these vehicles is a luxury that does not exist. Perhaps solid state batteries will provide an answer, but I think for farm and construction vehicles, then the hope has to be that the (unlikely?) dream of “green hydrogen” becomes some sort of reality 🤔
Burning hydrogen in an ice is a dumb idea. For the same work as could be done in a pure ev machine, 3-5x more electricity needs to be generated to produce the hydrogen compress it, transport it, and the final inefficient ice. For keep your old ice tractor for the couple of days a year you need to run 24/7.
@@nordic5490 😂😂😂😂 Clearly you have absolutely no clue ref burning hydrogen in ice units. You might try a Google on this subject ... would save you coming out with specious nonsense. It sounds as if you bought into some historical info yet have neglected to keep up with R&D. This happens a great deal on this and related channels. Batteries are not the answer in "colder climates" ... seeing Teslas queuing for hours proved that. Forget all this jabber about preheating batteries, it certainly didn't help those Teslas, did it. Hydrogen will end up being the "fuel of choice" whether you like it or not. The idea is to clean up the atmosphere and "hopefully" decrease the rate of global warming thus slowing down the rate of global ice melt. Given rising sea levels are more of a danger to the planet, for obvious reasons, cost and efficiency aren't that important despite what you and others might believe. More water will result in greater tidal range and adversely affect the weather. We have seen just a glimpse of what the weather can do, and that's just the start. Much more research for you my lad.
How about people being able to rent an electric car as a second car included in their insurance something has to be done quickly to enable the poorest to have an electric car on a mass scale ,time is running out
This tractor, while lovely, has about the same horsepower and the same 7-hour runtime as a 1940s little grey Fergie (as Marvin TP has commented.) As the (eloquent) Adam Henson says of the new tractor... "... But it's tiny..." If you look here at the Laura Farms channel, youtube.com/@LauraFarms you can see the scale of a modern operation, which she actually describes as "small." Some of her machines take 260 gallons of diesel to fill the tank - that doesn't last them the day - AND they think it's worth their while taking a dedicated diesel filling trailer to the harvest field to minimise the downtime. Converted to electric, some of these machines actually run at 500 kW. That's not 500 kW for 5 seconds like a Tesla or a Porsche, but flat out, all day! That means they would use up the battery in the new Tesla semi in 2 hours. The only way to get these big machines electric is via battery swap - and probably battery swap in the field, while moving along. That's the way the combines unload the grain. The challenge is just huge.
Simple answer, NO, Same problem as HGVs. Batteries suffer from terrible energy density. Look at the amount of work being done by a 200 hp tractor pulling an 8 furrow reversible plough or a large disc/chain harrow. He wants to work all day and not stop for for charging. You'll need a battery the size Turkey and the cost will be the same as the GDP of France. Diesel rules in the world of heavy work - tractors, HGVs trains and ships. Unless you can get a 2 MW battery to be the size of a 200 li fuel tank, recharge in 10 mins, and be cheap enough so he doesnt have to sell the farm to buy it, farmers are not interested. So you can bugger off with your silly toy of a tractor.
Avant are already in the market with their e series loaders. They’re fairly small but that’s Avant’s sector of the market anyway. Since it’s basically a hydraulic / hydrostatic system it’s essentially using an electric motor for a pump, but with proper weight distribution it’s one time battery weight can be an advantage.
These videos allways put a smile on my face and give me hope for the future. Thank you for making them.
He mentioned "Anaerobic digesters" (timestamp 8:29), may I suggest a Fully Charge episode on Anaerobic digesters, because you don't hear much about that. A while ago I read something about a dio-digester which would be sent out to the third world and someone with 4 cows would have enough gas from that to cook. But if you can make electricity from that it would be cool. You could even put it through a fuel cell.
This is the sort of tech that can be used when their is extra demand for power, not just when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.
Biogas is quite dirty so the amount of energy etc to make it clean enough for a fuel cell probably would make that prohibitive, a combustion engine is what they normally use, and can in a way be efficient if you use the waste heat for something useful. The co2 from it could even be used to enrich the air in greenhouses
@@backacheache I don't think you understand what I was referring to.
When a cow goes the toilet it doesn't cost any energy, if you want to pick it all up from a field that would be a problem but if they are in a cow shed for the winter then it's got to be deal with anyway.
So you put the cow poo poo in a container and it creates methain (or however you spell it), that can then go directly into a fuel cell. I know fuel cells are associated with hydrogen, but you can put different gases in them. And then you get electricity.
@@matthewbaynham6286 I do understand, the point is the gases in a fuel cell have to be very pure, and the methane from a digester would need expensive processing to meet the required grade
This is great to see.
What the average viewer might not realise is that tractors of this size are generally used inside buildings and greenhouses. In other words confined spaces. They are even used inside tunnels by the construction industry.
Most people associate farming and tractors with big open wide spaces but this is often not the case. Certainly for small farm machinery anyway.
A skid-steer/small loader I think is one of the most used motorized equipment on a farm and is never far away from a plug.
Great to see movement to elec in small farm vehicles, hope there are more on the market since this filming. The giant vehicles are going to be a much bigger challenge and I don't see an easy solution. Something like 10MWhr of elec juice would be required to run one combine for a 12hour shift. No farm like Adam's will have a power connection this large. You'd need a relay of trucks with pre-charged batteries on board from Aggreko arriving in rota as the grain gets shipped out! We'll need to think out the box for this one...
Electric version of a 1940s 'Little Grey Fergie' tractor would revolutionise farming all around the world.
We'll have to get Daft Punk on that one...
That's pretty much exactly what this tractor is in its scale. It has about the same horsepower and the same 7-hour runtime. As the (eloquent) Adam Henson says...
"... But it's tiny..."
If you look here at the Laura Farms channel,
youtube.com/@LauraFarms
you can see the scale of a modern operation, which she actually describes as "small." Some of her machines take 260 gallons of diesel to fill the tank - that doesn't last them the day - AND they think it's worth their while taking a dedicated diesel filling trailer to the harvest field to minimise the downtime.
Converted to electric, some of these machines actually run at 500 kW. That's not 500 kW for 5 seconds like a Tesla or a Porsche, but flat out, all day! That means they would use up the battery in the new Tesla semi in 2 hours.
The only way to get these big machines electric is via battery swap - and probably battery swap in the field, while moving along. That's the way the combines unload the grain. The challenge is just huge.
@@londonwestman1 I totally agree that it would be very hard to scale up for the prairies of Europe and America but there are lots and lots of small farms that would see the same revolution in farming that the little grey Fergie offred in the 40s.
These small farms use animal power even now.
China is already producing electric combine harvesters. They are smaller than European harvesters but they are automated and operate as a group. Very clever. Especially when farmers could generate their own electricity with windmills.
Do you know the name of the company producing the electric combines? Very cool stuff.
@@kylekleman Unfortunately no. I saw it on a CGTN video. They used drones and marked out fields and let the harvesters operate autonomously as a group. It would have been during the harvest.
@@davidlazarus67 I can work with that. Thabks
@@kylekleman My pleasure. I hope you find the information that you are looking for.
@@kylekleman I did see a couple of videos on the use of drones for crop spraying which might possibly be of interest to you. They were on The New Atlas channel 4 months ago.
Thanks for coverings this I wasn't sure where we were up to as far as electrifying agriculture, its clear we have a long way to go, but its great we are off the mark now.
I can imagine this being used at sites like the national trust were the peace and quiet would be invaluable plus for events (or just for power tools) it can be used as a mobile electricity supply
NT have one of these at Greenway in Devon. They kindly let me have a test drive on it about a year ago before I bought one. I think they said there were another 4 on order for other properties at that time. It’s a great little tractor, but with supply chain issues took 9 months from time of order to arrive from India which was frustrating. As said in the video it’s made for small holdings, large greenhouses, estate work etc not for farming and it meets these needs really well. I’m with Robert on the reversing noise though - so loud and annoying!
@@Devondabbler I stayed at a holiday park in France where the groundstaff just used electric vehicles and tools, it was perfect for allowing the staff to work and the guests to sleep, I can imagine them (and places like them) using one of these
Possibly just suit my 20 acre hobby farm in Queensland Australia. I'm using a two metre wide flail mower for half a day once a month to cut grassed areas. I'm guessing this would take three charge cycles or more to do the same job. Not paying over $2 a litre is a great incentive when I already have 47kW of solar in a sunny climate.
For farms where a large tractor needs to run 12 or 24 hours a day several times a year, I think large swappable batteries could be leased? Even with a 200 amp supply to the property and half that again in solar, you'd be pushing it to keep a very large electric tractor supplied with enough charged batteries.
To recharge the combine in 1 hr... you'd need a power substation.
I imagine it would take more than an hr to swap batteries of the size needed.
Good to see this video again.
Thank a Farmer! Farmer's feed all of us globally so these changes are amazing.
It will be interesting to see how (or if) electric farm vehicles become the norm. Can't see why Quads and the like aren't there already, but for bigger equipment there are huge hurdles, there's a reason they burn so much deisel, unlike cars they often work at or near maximum power, and seven hours is of little use to most contractors, as the saying goes "make hay while the sun shines". You might think "well that's fine just add more batteries", not that simple, soil compaction is already a problem.
In NY state my father's barn got electricity before the house. It was for cooling the milk.
To encourage farmers, if I was in Government, I would put in place a subsidy that would pay for the battery pack over the expected life of the tractor. Put solar on all the south facing farm buildings, and introduce a charging network on the farm that can be shared by the public at the road side.
Fendt the German Tractor manufacturer has had on sale the First medium size fully electric EV tractor in production for the past two years , the Model is the Fendt e100 Vario which can operate at full power with implements from its rear PTO (power take off ) for 5 consecutive hours and will charge to 80% charge in 40 minutes it also has an enclosed cab with air conditioning
so 30 min travel from charge station to field and then 4 hr work then 30 min from field to charge station.
There aren't charging stations at the edge of each field and it would cost too much to put them in.
For a small, maybe 40 to 60 acre farm, I can easily see the electric tractor being practical. 4 hr and the whole place can be mowed. A few days and you could plow it.
for my 11 acres, that compact electric could be practical...
For the huge farm that one guy has 2 combines to deal with harvesting before the grain spoils... the stopping to recharge would rot 1/3 of the crop.
Way cool! Robert, you rock! Love the channel so much.
Great to see an episode on Tractors. I love it because It Just Makes Sense!
I have been enjoyed, so thank you for delivering.
This is a "re-run" from a couple of years ago....
Avant are already in the market with their e series loaders.
They’re fairly small but that’s Avant’s sector of the market anyway. Since it’s basically a hydraulic / hydrostatic system it’s essentially using an electric motor for a pump, but with proper weight distribution it’s one time battery weight can be an advantage.
Autonomous tractors are a thing already in Australia! Just waiting for the electric powered ones.
Kudos for you green practice, Kryters.. even recycling you output now....
Well done...!!!!
Wheres the recharge socket ? :-)
Great application for electric vehicles! It'll reduce this farmer's operating expenses, maintenance expenses, and overall emissions all at once. So exciting to see this kind of progress.
It's many years ago I heard about electric tractors first time!
It was someone in USA making them. I think it was still kind of mostly "hand build" - so small scale, but big enough he was selling them!
They were talking about how the the weight that was normally a con with EVs was a plus for tractors, as you needed weight to get traction in a muddy field. And the fact it was small was also nice and making a lot of stuff easier! It was an audio podcast, but I imagined it kind of the same size as the little Massey Ferguson... The old grey ones that we got a lot of in EU after WW2....
The way they made it sound, and one of the was a farmer who had bought one, was that anything else was straight up dumb!
As a Norfolk lass….thank you! 😊
We absolutely need all farming equipment to be electric!! Besides the emissions and diesel smell, the noise those machines make is just the worst.
And you have to wonder how much oil (diesel and hydraulic) ends up on the produce.
@@MattOGormanSmith excellent point. Even if it's a new tractor and nothing leaks, the exhaust particles will definitely find their onto the produce. I'm washing my veggies a bit better from now on...
usa Maine i hv a john deere diesel 4 my 13 acre farm 2 b. . EV would be really nice. those diesel fumes are deadly! 😁
Great episode - but why isn't this on the main Fully Charged channel?
Bi-directional charging? Here's a vehicle that won't get a ton of use for much of the time and could always be plugged in at night. Great to have as both a big battery and a funky ride on mower...
would make a good scraper tracter for tom pemberton still think fuel cell is the way to go on the bigger stuff and trucks hopaly we will see more of that in the coming years
And why do you think fuel cell is the way to go?
So frustrating for many rural businesses such as farms with large rooftop solar potential, that they're often not able to fully realise that potential simply because many of the local DNO's aren't set up to accept such high levels of power inputs.
Adam's farm looks as though it could easily generate 2-3× the amount of solar power they're currently generating.
Farms are always looking to diversify their income but when it comes to renewables generation exports, they're simply not getting the kind of support necessary.
You can always export limit the inverter. 14kW systems in Australia export 5kW. Perfect for running Aircon, cool rooms, charging cars.
@@andrewradford3953 Yes, you can. But on a farm like Adam's, where his current system is a 50kW one - or more - should he ever want to enlarge it substantially, some of the only ways you (may) soak up that kind of extra juice is if you've got a large milking shed or possibly poultry/pig set-up and not every rural business/farm has those.
There must be standards for battery modules where the farmer can buy the machines required and as many battery modules as needed with a charging station. This may reduce costs and allow devices to run for longer by hot-swapping batteries.
And yet there aren’t. Not yet
Tractors are the ideal machines to be electric! You don't even need to worry about weight.
You might Google up soil compaction. Far more "important" than was realised only a few ago.
Kew Gardens did a project on soil compaction following a tree being blown down in a gale.
Plenty online if arsed.
Similar follow up from one on Roberts videos like this one. Robert was talking to the CEO think Scottish Power about EV charging stations. He said central Scotland on edge of Perth needed EV Station but cost of getting power there was too expensive.. Now its going ahead. The largest charging station in Scotland..
You need to take a look at the Monarch electric tractor!
What's strange is how the kept the hood shape that's designed to house a gasoline engine even though changing the shape would allow to install more batteries
I'm guessing that charging bigger equipment would take too long than just with 240V AC. Perhaps standardized modular battery packs that could be swapped between equipment could help when days are long and there isn't 8 hours for a small tractor, or what? 36 hours for a combine?
That is not a Tractor , that is a toy.
I live in the farming belt of America. People have no idea of the size of equipment used in farming.
The added weight of the needed batteries is going to be a problem when you scale it up.
Farms in America are 8, 10, 12,000 acres. The equipment has to be hauled in pieces by semi to get it from a to b.
I think Hydrogen is the use case for replacing Diesel equipment for farming.
It's definitely NOT a toy. OK, it's small, but such vehicles have a place in small farms and recreational facilities. If an owner can generate their own electricity thereby saving fuel costs, they will offset the higher initial expense. As more and more electric vehicles come on the market prices will inevitably be reduced.
Weight is not really a big problem for a tractor! And due to the way electric works, they don't have to be so big in order to do the same work! Just because something is one way now, doesn't mean it is the only way, or that every thing has to be exactly the same!
There is a lot of potiential in electric tractors!
@Gerry It would be great for someone with a small acerage. I can see that being a benefit.
Burning hydrogen in an ice is a dumb idea. For the same work as could be done in a pure ev machine, 3-5x more electricity needs to be generated to produce the hydrogen compress it, transport it, and the final inefficient ice.
What worries me is soil compaction. EVs are heavier than normal vehicles and I worry that this would be tough on the soil. BUT hoping that solid-state batteries will help to change that.
Great episode - I’d be interested in the update
Whenever you get up to the industrial size electric tractors and combines, you would have huge batteries that you could use to power your house when they are not otherwise working like the Ford F150 Lightning
Cricket pitches needs a lot of rolling - in the summer my local cricket club rolls their pitches with a ICE powered machine - those volunteers who do this work would extend their lives with an electric version of that cricket roller. Hopefully some day soon.
Like wise golf club grass cutting machinery.
I don't suppose many local cricket clubs have 25k to spend on a new tractor unfortunately. Tho I suppose most golf courses could afford to invest in some and in my opinion should.
England seems to be way ahead of the curve. Very informative!
Meanwhile in The Netherlands: autonomous harvesting robots already doing their job on Dutch dairy farms (search for Lely Exos)
@@tinus706 Indeed, Europe is very far ahead of the US in electrification. We have so much work to do here. Thank you.
Commercial rates for electricity are more expensive than residential, my neighbour farmer is paying 98 pence per kw! It will be a long time before things go electric with the initial price being so much higher and running costs being more expensive with current electricity rates.
There certainly are places an electric tractor could be useful.
But forget the idea of electric power in combines and support vehicles (tractors and trucks) during major harvest. They have to run virtually 24-7 for 3 to 6 weeks.
Everything Electric Show
FARMTRAC EV AWESOME
One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow. One man and his battery beep! beep!
We need an update of electrification of electric farm vehicles.
Does the U.K. really subsidize the cost of diesel fuel for farm tractors? If so, this seems like something that would hinder the switch to electricity, which is presumably not subsidized.
🎖🏆🏅Are farm machinery at Fully Charged LIVE- ICC Sydney from 11th to 12th March 2023. I will be there in Sydney.
Is this going to become the +24 month channel?
That is a proper hat. I have one but it was made in China. I would love to have one made in Yorkshire.
my car has electric power steering. seems like that would use it too. running a pump all the time has to be a battery suck. and no solar panels on top?
Love your videos
farm barns fitted with solar, and multiple wind turbines out in the fields, then exchangeable batteries for tractors would be on another level. you wouldn't need storage batteries, you would just switch out the tractor ones as storage.
Big machines are currently used because of lack of skilled farm operators but when automation comes to fruition, the need for big tractors will decrease and lots of small machines can be utilised (robotic fleet) and therefore lots of smaller batteries rather than trying to produce bigger batteries for bigger machines..........additionally, using hydrogen powered farm equipment (see JCB hydrogen video's)
Burning hydrogen in an ice is a dumb idea. For the same work as could be done in a pure ev machine, 3-5x more electricity needs to be generated to produce the hydrogen compress it, transport it, and the final inefficient ice.
If the battery costs £2000 then how come the ev version is £8000 more than the diesel diesel tractor ? the two electric motors ect shouldn't be more than £6000.
Probably because the diesel version is mass produced and the electric version isn't. Hopefully, in time, that will change.
Gotta love an Electric Tractor 👍🔋
The good thing about changing to electric for things like tractors is that the larger the vehicle is, the easier it is to design around the need for batteries. Getting enough power from the electric motors is no issue in real terms, its all about the cost of those batteries which is bound to improve over time and what you need to charge it. While you coud get away with charging a smaller unit like the one shown here from a regular socket, you would definately need at least a fast-charger working off a 3-phase supply for the bigger machinery.
Well CATL just dropped their battery costs to capture more market so these should be easier to make by cost. But that assumes playing the same game as the system wants you to play. Why doesn't the government subsidy food more by paying for the gear it takes to plant and pick?
Despite the new clean tech I'm not convinced that shedding the weeds is better for insects and other animals living and hiding among the plants than cutting them down at ground level with a scythe. At least animals would have a chance to survive and time to escape.
of course what wasn't mentioned was by going min til the tractors wouldn't necessarily have to be that big.
I would imagine that this would be a great application for interchangeable battery modules. The batteries would be staged around the farm at carefully planned locations. As the tractor/combine battery becomes depleted they would pull into the strategically located battery barn and swap in a fully charged unit. The battery left behind would immediately begin recharging. Yes it would be expensive to set up but this is exactly the sort of thing that can be aided with government assistance programs - and not just big commercial farmers, but the little ones too. We're undergoing a paradigm shift in energy distribution. We've done it before with electricity and the government helped with that (in the US at least). They also helped with building out the phone system as well. Oh yeah, highway system too. This would not be any different and actually is a lot more critically important.
driving to a battery is a waste of time. Battery should bedriven to a tractor/combine to the spot where the battery gets depleted. With combines it is a bit easier though. A vehicle with large battery can come up from behind and plug-in to charge it on the go. Similar to when trucks driving in parallel and being filled with grain.
Tens of thousands of $ per battery for the large tractors... possibly $100k + for the combine battery.
Deere S790 Combine is 543 hp. Roughly 50,0000 watts. 50 killowatt-hr of battery per hr you want it to run.
A combine battery would weigh a few tons... You aren't changing it in less than an hr average even if it's designed for fast swapping.
Robert, where is at HAT to protect you from the 🌞SUN🌞
This is a tricky subject as animal agriculture is the climate change elephant in the room 51% of all global emissions, more than all forms of transportation combined. That’s also not even talking about the insane level of land clearing, and the fact that it polluted nearby rivers. And yet nobody ever talks it
Considering how much diesel tractor users probably burn through this can only be a good thing - sadly I reckon a lot of the old school farm types have the same negative mindset like those that hate on PV and heat pumps. Scale (battery pack), charging and runtime is likely going to be the limiting factor at the moment I imagine…
With tractors it's a bit different than with cars. 6-7 motor hours is less than half-time. During seeding and harvest all this heavy machinery runs sunrise to sunset and even longer if climate allows. Most likely, driver finishing the day is not going to be the same as the one starting it. But when weather window opens up, those machines run non-stop. There are no rapid chargers in the middle of the field, and they can't afford to stop for few hours to charge. So no surprise that even the most progressive farmers will be skeptical.
You don't need 1000km battery in a family hatchback, but you need 18 hour battery in a tractor.
Have the BBCs country file programme coverd this ?
If farmers completely covered all their build roofs with solar, & installed large house batteries / power walls, then it would reduce the fuel cost from being insanely high with dirty fossil fuels, to being ZERO with 100% electric machines. They could even sell excess electricity to the mains grid! And of course, agrivoltaics have been proven to not lower food production, which generating HUGE amount of solar electricity from farmland, worth more in income the even the food, without reducing it!
☹ While you tube states this as a new video. - is this not the same video put up on Fully charged main channel 12 month ago? is "Everything Electric" to be you tube version of Dave???
I think the only way electric can work on bigger tractors is to have swappable batteries with high speed charging, so you can swap over once or twice a day. Running a tractor is one thing but running a PTO to drive another machine behind will always be a big ask for a battery pack.
Maybe lease a few extra packs during busy times.
The attached device can have its own battery, and electric power unit. No need for pto.
Isn't this an older video?
2020, maybe even pre-pandemic.
Hmm, an interesting point.
Running out of "battery pushing experts" to interview perhaps ... that'll be it.
"first released on our sister channel the Fully Charged Show in 2020"
@@JLGBinken I follow fully charged since the beginning and I still don't get what this branding nonsense is all about. It's a different channel now?
2 yrs ago? Something like that! I guess Robert's with the in-laws in the land of sandpaper, preparing for his first show of the year?
Farmers can do solar, wind, and water harvesting from their sheds as well.
Offcourse not all vehicles in the farm needs to be electric but I am sure their future transport to replace Land Rovers could be EV 's powered by their own generated electricity.
The solution for large open areas of arable land is not battery but tethered electric. Just as the mining industry has used for decades, you have a small battery for basic to-ing and fro-ing but once in a field, you hook up to the mains and lay out a cable as you go one way and wind it back in on the return. It's not exactly rocket science.
As with the whole alternative energy and EV world, the bottleneck is batteries; their cost and size/weight to energy density ratio. Probably we're about to see breakthroughs in battery tech that help to bring EV costs to par with ICE equivalents. THEN, but not before, even heavy equipment will be battery-powered,
Weird it doesn't have electric power steering as I would have thought that would be a given. Wonder why it isn't. 🤔
The hydraulic system (inc power steering) needs a pump to run but it is fully electric.
@@Devondabbler Not what I asked. The steering can't be fully electric if it's powered by Hydraulics.
One exciting possibility with electric tractors is the possible elimination of the mechanical PTO, which together with the power take on contraptions on the machinery is complicated, dangerous, unreliable and inefficient. Powering the machinery with a built-in electric motor, powered from the battery of the host tractor could be revolutionary.
Of course, there is a lot of investment in the attachments, so it will take a while for these to reach obsolescence, but it will happen.
Correct. Eliminating the pto a good thing.
The average magic tractor turns into a field,, your magic tractor changes from blue to purple...
If they decide to only build electric combines, then farms will use them or close up shop.
I:m sure I saw this already... a repeat ?
This is an old video disappointing thought it would be at least an update of where these tractors were being used. Let's be realistic about the amount of power required to do agricultural work. During peak working times these would need to run up to 16 hours a day with power Up to 200kW. Batteries and costs will have to improve a lot before it will be viable.
Given the diminutive size it is not really a serious farm tractor, but possibly might make more sense for large industrial green house operations where diesel power is problematic - even if the price differential is significant.
Living on a commercial farm myself, I think the challenge for electric powered tractors and combines is the way these get used in terms of available crop and weather windows - so when harvesting you need to be running combines and tractors close to 24 hours a day and so losing a chunk of time recharging the sort of battery size required for these vehicles is a luxury that does not exist. Perhaps solid state batteries will provide an answer, but I think for farm and construction vehicles, then the hope has to be that the (unlikely?) dream of “green hydrogen” becomes some sort of reality 🤔
Burning hydrogen in an ice is a dumb idea. For the same work as could be done in a pure ev machine, 3-5x more electricity needs to be generated to produce the hydrogen compress it, transport it, and the final inefficient ice.
For keep your old ice tractor for the couple of days a year you need to run 24/7.
@@nordic5490
😂😂😂😂
Clearly you have absolutely no clue ref burning hydrogen in ice units.
You might try a Google on this subject ... would save you coming out with specious nonsense.
It sounds as if you bought into some historical info yet have neglected to keep up with R&D. This happens a great deal on this and related channels. Batteries are not the answer in "colder climates" ... seeing Teslas queuing for hours proved that.
Forget all this jabber about preheating batteries, it certainly didn't help those Teslas, did it.
Hydrogen will end up being the "fuel of choice" whether you like it or not.
The idea is to clean up the atmosphere and "hopefully" decrease the rate of global warming thus slowing down the rate of global ice melt.
Given rising sea levels are more of a danger to the planet, for obvious reasons, cost and efficiency aren't that important despite what you and others might believe.
More water will result in greater tidal range and adversely affect the weather.
We have seen just a glimpse of what the weather can do, and that's just the start.
Much more research for you my lad.
Surprisingly, I think the farming look suits Robert
How about people being able to rent an electric car as a second car included in their insurance something has to be done quickly to enable the poorest to have an electric car on a mass scale ,time is running out
This tractor, while lovely, has about the same horsepower and the same 7-hour runtime as a 1940s little grey Fergie (as Marvin TP has commented.) As the (eloquent) Adam Henson says of the new tractor...
"... But it's tiny..."
If you look here at the Laura Farms channel,
youtube.com/@LauraFarms
you can see the scale of a modern operation, which she actually describes as "small." Some of her machines take 260 gallons of diesel to fill the tank - that doesn't last them the day - AND they think it's worth their while taking a dedicated diesel filling trailer to the harvest field to minimise the downtime.
Converted to electric, some of these machines actually run at 500 kW. That's not 500 kW for 5 seconds like a Tesla or a Porsche, but flat out, all day! That means they would use up the battery in the new Tesla semi in 2 hours.
The only way to get these big machines electric is via battery swap - and probably battery swap in the field, while moving along. That's the way the combines unload the grain. The challenge is just huge.
How can they even justify 24K and VAT, 28.8K for a small tractor, really, what's the upholstery made of, unicorn skin?
bah, seen this already of FCHSH
Terrible noise in reverse¡ 🤣
What's up? Short of material so you have to rehash old vlogs?
Isn’t this an old video from a year or so ago? Why are you putting this up as a “new” video? Very annoying!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Simple answer, NO, Same problem as HGVs. Batteries suffer from terrible energy density. Look at the amount of work being done by a 200 hp tractor pulling an 8 furrow reversible plough or a large disc/chain harrow. He wants to work all day and not stop for for charging. You'll need a battery the size Turkey and the cost will be the same as the GDP of France. Diesel rules in the world of heavy work - tractors, HGVs trains and ships. Unless you can get a 2 MW battery to be the size of a 200 li fuel tank, recharge in 10 mins, and be cheap enough so he doesnt have to sell the farm to buy it, farmers are not interested. So you can bugger off with your silly toy of a tractor.
weeds have no brains
Is this re-upload?
Avant are already in the market with their e series loaders.
They’re fairly small but that’s Avant’s sector of the market anyway. Since it’s basically a hydraulic / hydrostatic system it’s essentially using an electric motor for a pump, but with proper weight distribution it’s one time battery weight can be an advantage.