Monarch Tractor Preps For Layoffs and Warns Employees It May 'Shut Down' (techcrunch.com) 25
Autonomous electric tractor startup Monarch Tractor -- which we covered in 2022 -- warned staff Thursday it may need to lay off more than 100 employees, or possibly even "shut down," according to a company-wide memo obtained by TechCrunch. The report adds: The memo comes after Monarch Tractor was already cutting some positions over the last few weeks at its California corporate facilities and remote teams in India and Singapore, according to multiple former employees who spoke with TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity.
Monarch Tractor was founded in 2018 by a team that included a former top executive at Tesla's first gigafactory and Carlo Mondavi, a scion of the famous winemaking family. The company raised at least $220 million, including $133 million in 2024, as it pursued a goal of making "driver optional" autonomous tractors that could perform tasks at places like wineries and other fruit farms.
Monarch Tractor was founded in 2018 by a team that included a former top executive at Tesla's first gigafactory and Carlo Mondavi, a scion of the famous winemaking family. The company raised at least $220 million, including $133 million in 2024, as it pursued a goal of making "driver optional" autonomous tractors that could perform tasks at places like wineries and other fruit farms.
Used/old tractor makers are doing fine. (Score:3, Interesting)
Enter the unsung heroes: venerable tractor makers like sometimes Ford and International Harvester, whose mechanical marvels shun "stupid electronic shit." These workhorses, think the pre-DRM 1960s John Deere 4020 or the indomitable IH 1066, don't have DRM shackles, letting farmers wield wrenches freely. No subscription-locked software, no fleet managers spying via GPS; just pure, repairable engineering built to outlast owners. That's why you see these tractors being passed down in families
And farmers are voting with their wallets. The used tractor market, projected to swell from $59 billion in 2025 to nearly $75 billion by 2035 at a 2% CAGR, is a gold rush for these old tractors. Sales of pre-owned ag gear are eyeing 18% growth this year, with 60% of operators eyeing upgrades to proven vintage iron over shiny new failures. Yeah, that's right: Longevity, baby. A well-maintained traditional tractor clocks 4,000–15,000 hours, or 15–30 years of sweat equity. Some Midwest beasts from the 1920s still plow fields today, century marks in sight. Many many Ford 8N's are still hauling hay at 80+. John Deere's 4440 has many of 20,000-hour runs.
In an era of planned obsolescence, these dinosaurs endure because they're farmer-proof: simple, souped-up with aftermarket parts, and free from corporate kill-switches. As used auctions hum and old-timers rumble on, the outcome is clear: in the dirt, dumb and durable beats smart and fragile every time.
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Short version: some of the general themes are grounded in real issues (right-to-repair, farmer frustration, durability of older tractors) — but most of the specific numbers are invented, exaggerated, or unverifiable.
There are multiple red flags indicating this post is more rhetoric than research.
CLAIM 1
“A $773,000 deal soured into breach-of-contract claims”
Verdict: Plausible but too vague to verify
There have been lawsuits over
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That seems to be a habit with that user. Admittedly I sometimes remember things incorrectly, and when I'm corrected acknowledge that I was wrong (and generally thank them for the correction if they're polite about it). So far I haven't seen him acknowledge being wrong even when presented with clear evidence to the contrary.
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Some of us are. I did my BS in computer science. Spent 15 years in IT working mostly with Linux servers.
I now run a large farm. My background is actually a really good fit for farming. In fact I think farming would be a good fit for quite a few Linux enthusiasts and makers.
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Did you inherit the farm, or went into it green?
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Unfortunately there are really only two practical ways to get into farming these days.
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Which are?
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Have it given to you
Steal it
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Re:Used/old tractor makers are doing fine. (Score:4, Interesting)
We still have running tractors from the 1940s and 50s. John Deere two-cylinder "putt putt" tractors.
If there was a golden age of tractors, it's hard to pin it down. Yes the 4020 was and is a great tractor, but it's not a tractor you'd want to run all day every day. It's loud and the cab was never comfortable. The Deere 50-series tractors from the 1980s were pretty good, and the cabs were comfortable and quiet. In the 90s there were some good ones too but ideas on what looked good were really weird in that decade. Our current tractors are all 15-20 years old with about the right amount of electronics for my taste. However the engines from this era have a mixed reputation for longevity on some models.
So it's a mixed bag. Computer-controlled engines sure start nice, even in the winter. But a fully mechanical engine can be rebuilt several times.
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I think that most of them "went out of business" because they were bought by a larger competitor and shut down.
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Chinese machines are already making inroads where they aren't banned. You can get a lot of decent construction equipment from there too. That's the danger here, by the time Western companies get around to producing EV tractors with all the advantages they bring, the market will be saturated with mature and competitively priced products.
As for durability, some EVs have proven to be very fixable. Nissan Leafs are a good example. Relatively simple, not difficult to work on, drivetrain that is separate from eve
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Electric motors can certainly last. Assuming they don't take a bath, an all-electric solution, kept simple, could easily become reliable long lived vintage in the future.
When I say kept simple, I'm talking about no big-ass computer in the middle. No requirements of connectivity. Stuff like GPS autonomy as an optional extra hardware add-on.
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The other option for kept simple is make the central chassis computer fully open source. Top to bottom. So then any and every tinkerer can maintain all parts.
I blame the scientists (Score:2)
Should have invested (Score:2)
In NVDA....
From the 2022 Slashdot article
"NVIDIA is proud of its role in the first commercially available smart tractor (which began rolling off the production line Thursday). Monarch Tractor's MK-V "combines electrification, automation, and data analysis to help farmers reduce their carbon footprint, improve field safety, streamline farming operations, and increase their bottom lines," according to NVIDIA's blog.
NVIDIA's been touting the ability to accelerate machine learning applications with its low-powe
Electric tractors? (Score:2)
I'm puzzled by this. Monarch was trying to do two things:
1. Sell electric tractors
2. Sell autonomous tractors.
It seems lots of other companies similarly conflate "autonomous" with "battery electric". Anyone know why they do this? I mean, I know it was Tesla who first made waves with self-driving(ish) cars and since it was Tesla, of course they were electric. But these seem like two different products with two different sets of challenges to me.
Surely if you wanted to de-risk your autonomous tractor progra
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