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childintimetoday at 7:03 PM1 replyview on HN

Wait? No electric tractors yet? Swappable batteries would be perfect.


Replies

quickthrowmantoday at 8:08 PM

A tractor does actual work like pulling an implement like a plow or spinning the PTO to power a machine like a wood splitter or well drill.

Airplane engines are rebuilt every 5,000ish miles because they’re constantly running at like 50% load, it’s much harder on the engine than moving a car, a tractor is very similar.

Car engines do very little work once you’re up to speed, it only takes a fraction of the max power available to keep the car moving. This is why EVs are possible.

Running a tractor engine under load requires a lot of energy, battery density isn’t quite there yet, diesel has around 50x more energy by weight than a battery.

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