Cabless electric tractor

JD-Kid

Member
when first left school just about all the tractors were open cab I drove a few bigger ones had what could be best described as a garden shed on wheels yer thought yer were a god once yer drove the likes of TW20 JD 2040 etc with the flash cabs
open air good till it rains or dusty few times rolling paddocks I think I took 1/2 the paddock home with me looking like a dirt coloured coal miner hahaha
feeding out in the middle of winter in the rain sucked
mind you broken AC inn the hight of summer sucks as well

tend to find most open cab tractors now days simple not as many switches more levers just due to waterproofing of stuff
 
I doubt Commercial vehicles will go electric with batteries unless battery prices drop considerably.

The reason being Commercial vehicles usually work far longer hours than cars - which usually do short journeys for a few hours at most.

Commercial vehicles can be worked in shifts, so potentially no time for recharging. Hence the reason JCB think the future is hydrogen.
Plenty of electric forklifts working 24 hours a day. One battery charging whilst the other is in use, two minutes to swap.
 
Plenty of electric forklifts working 24 hours a day. One battery charging whilst the other is in use, two minutes to swap.


Forklift combustion engine is about 60hp for a 4 tonne forklift. I would guess you are talking about 1 or 2.5 tonne so probably half - 30hp. Going at about 8mph.

Trucks are about 400hp+ 29 tonne load and I guess the rig & trailer must be circa 12 tonnes - add an 8 tonne battery to that. About 50 tonnes going at 56mph. I doubt the battery will last 2 hours.
 

T Hectares

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Berkshire
I think the open station Electric tractor is a wonderful romantic notion

Until you’ve spent all day with the dust blowing in your face, the sun beating on you and the annoying sound of metal on stone contact of the implement, and trying to convince an employee that this is a step forward, good luck

My experience with a cabless JD on an outdoor pig unit many years ago was that in theory it was a great idea, in reality the staff hated it after the novelty wore off !!

I’m quite happy in my air conditioned box thanks !!
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
All of which got me thinking- it's all a bit disconnected isnt it? I'd much rather have been admiring the view in silence, and in the fresh air. Ok, so take the spraying bit out of the equation, but if someone made an electric cabless tractor I'd have one in a heartbeat.
Farmtrac. There is even a UK importer.

I looked at one and ran away when I saw the price.... Bought a Korean 25hp diesel sub compact for under half the money for in the solar farm...
 
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Scholsey

Member
Location
Herefordshire
Already on trial here


Imagine if supermarket distribution centers we're covered in solar panels, wind turbines and even a AD plant for the waste food from supermarkets, charged the lorry fleets batteries and every time lorry came for a new load it had a battery swapped, little battery forklift lifts the used battery out, new one in, all done before all the bread and milk has even been loaded into the lorry, think we will see it in the next 3 years.
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Well this thread was originally about a fleet of electric open station john deere 6030s silently tugging cultivators over merry England, driven by a group of people whose lives, and those of their families, were intimately connected with the land, and whose futures depended on the success of the crops they were growing, all whilst being able to admire the view in the fresh air. Or that sort of thing.

Driverless electric stuff on the other hand is, I'm sure, great. It will give everyone a bit more time to spend wondering whether they should install non-binary lavatories, or if men really can have babies.
Apparently they can
 

BBC

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
Said it before but electric powered scraper tractor should be next step in e-tractors... top it up with solar panels on the cubicle house.

The heavy tillage stuff needs time to develop, no need to run before we can walk.
An electric powered scraper tractor would be fine as it stays close to its charging source and the work it does will not place too much load on the battery. For anything doing heavy field work, the amount of battery power needed would be a massive extra weight and the load placed on the battery from heavy cultivation’s would drain it in no time. Farmers complain enough about having to refuel at tea time!

I think it was in Harry Metcalfes interview with Lord Bomford that he said that JCB reckon that battery power is only suitable for a machine such as a mini digger that does about 3 hours constant work a day. After that it is unviable and the battery capacity needed would be excessive and add too much weight, hence their concentrating on hydrogen, but that has its own limitations.

Still think that for the power output, weight and ease or refuelling there is nothing to beat diesel, so should be looking at biofuels, ideally from crops that I can grow!
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
An electric powered scraper tractor would be fine as it stays close to its charging source and the work it does will not place too much load on the battery. For anything doing heavy field work, the amount of battery power needed would be a massive extra weight and the load placed on the battery from heavy cultivation’s would drain it in no time. Farmers complain enough about having to refuel at tea time!

I think it was in Harry Metcalfes interview with Lord Bomford that he said that JCB reckon that battery power is only suitable for a machine such as a mini digger that does about 3 hours constant work a day. After that it is unviable and the battery capacity needed would be excessive and add too much weight, hence their concentrating on hydrogen, but that has its own limitations.

Still think that for the power output, weight and ease or refuelling there is nothing to beat diesel, so should be looking at biofuels, ideally from crops that I can grow!

Mess of a site, but very neat kit. A neighbour and I were going to buy one and grow some OSR and extract the oil for fuel, and the cake for cattle, but he backed out in the end.
 

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
An electric powered scraper tractor would be fine as it stays close to its charging source and the work it does will not place too much load on the battery. For anything doing heavy field work, the amount of battery power needed would be a massive extra weight and the load placed on the battery from heavy cultivation’s would drain it in no time. Farmers complain enough about having to refuel at tea time!

I think it was in Harry Metcalfes interview with Lord Bomford that he said that JCB reckon that battery power is only suitable for a machine such as a mini digger that does about 3 hours constant work a day. After that it is unviable and the battery capacity needed would be excessive and add too much weight, hence their concentrating on hydrogen, but that has its own limitations.

Still think that for the power output, weight and ease or refuelling there is nothing to beat diesel, so should be looking at biofuels, ideally from crops that I can grow!
If government would apptove it you could make a diesel substitute from wood and OSR. Been trying to get it approved for over a decade with no success.
 

JD-Kid

Member
I think it was in Harry Metcalfes interview with Lord Bomford that he said that JCB reckon that battery power is only suitable for a machine such as a mini digger that does about 3 hours constant work a day. After that it is unviable and the battery capacity needed would be excessive and add too much weight, hence their concentrating on hydrogen, but that has its own limitations.
mate was telling me he hired a wee electric digger for a job the hire co said best thing etc
did a few hours with it out of power back to hire outfit to get a genarater thought a small one would do it no had to be a bigger one took 8 hours to recharge it ....
in the long run used the same amount of fuel to do the job
diffrent on a building site if got the power to keep it plugged in but if the powers off or not there in the first place it kinda falls flat on it's face
 

Dead Rabbits

Member
Location
'Merica
Well this has not gone in quite the direction I was expecting!

By cabless I meant sitting in the open air doing the job without diesel fumes and noise, ie platform station or whatever the Americans call it, rather than sit-at-home-in-your-pants-full-on-robot tractors.
Neighbors here have numerous examples of what you speak of. Cab free quiet and close to the sounds of nature. The neighbors are Amish
 

Longlowdog

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Aberdeenshire
I watched a Youtube video yesterday that stated for a 38 tonne vehicle to do 500 miles the battery alone would weigh 4 tonnes. You sure ain't swapping that out like a drill battery. That's four tonnes of load gone.
Then batteries would have to be open source/nationalised (and unified in construction) or the guy who's just bought a brand new vehicle and battery operating at 100 % isn't going to be very happy swapping for a 3 year old battery at the first charge-changing point that runs at 60% efficiency.
 

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
But you can produce biodiesel for your own useage still?
Its called economies of scale. The smallest economic plant would cost approx 1.5m so for own useage is totally unviable. Far easier as others have said is to just use OSR without the wood. Problem with that is I would need 20x more OSR then if I was using OSR and wood. Personally for tractors I would convert the diesel engine to methane gas as most farms have feedstock that can be easily converted into methane or hydrogen.
 

steveR

Member
Mixed Farmer
Its called economies of scale. The smallest economic plant would cost approx 1.5m so for own useage is totally unviable. Far easier as others have said is to just use OSR without the wood. Problem with that is I would need 20x more OSR then if I was using OSR and wood. Personally for tractors I would convert the diesel engine to methane gas as most farms have feedstock that can be easily converted into methane or hydrogen.
Ahhh. Fair do's...

I look forward to seeing the latest JD or Fendt with a bloody big gas bag on the roof!! ;)


I know, I know, it will be compressed a bit in reality...
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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