Demand Is Booming For New No Tech, Repairable Tractor (404media.co) 207
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The secondary market for decades old, low-tech John Deere tractors has been booming for years as farmers have sought reliable tractors that they can actually fix without having to deal with John Deere's repair monopoly. A Canadian company has seen that demand and came up with a radical thought: What if they made a new, repairable, "no-tech" tractor to solve what has become a gigantic pain point for farmers? Alberta's Ursa Ag says that it has been inundated with demand after announcing its tractor, which costs roughly half as much as a Deere and has the benefit of not being a repair nightmare.
[...] Ursa Ag markets its tractors as "no frills" and "built to last." Ursa Ag's Doug Wilson told me that the company designed the tractor because of a need in the marketplace for a new machine that isn't loaded with tech and is easy to maintain. The company follows in the footsteps of consumer electronics companies like Fairphone, which makes a repairable smartphone and Framework, which makes modular, repairable laptops. The demand Ursa Ag has seen is part of the backlash to manufacturer repair monopolies and the injection of technology and internet-connected sensors and terms of use into even the most basic of gadgets. "I talk to farmers every day and I hear from farmers every day about how they went out and bought machinery from 1987 so that it wouldn't have a computer on it," Wilson said. "All of this came from a simple discussion with a customer who wanted to be able to turn [the tractor] on at the start of the day, to use it, and shut it off at the end of the day. It needed to work, so that's what we built."
Ursa Ag's tractor has been hyped in agriculture circles after Wilson showed the tractor off at a Canadian farm show and it was featured by Farms.com. Wilson said more than a thousand farmers have contacted him after that show, from roughly 30 countries. "I got a handwritten letter from a farmer in France who doesn't own a computer and wanted us to mail him information about the tractors," he said. He said the company has thus far made a couple fewer than 100 tractors but is working on tripling its production capacity and has seen a lot of demand over the last few months. "Given the number of my customers that carry flip phones, I would say there is consumer pressure to back away from some of the technology that is unnecessary to perform everyday tasks," Wilson said. "So that is definitely transferable to dishwashers and washing machines, refrigerators. Refrigerators that have screens on them that'll tell you what's inside. It's a little crazy."
"That high-tech stuff, the million-dollar John Deere tractor has a place. It has technology that is well worth the money," Wilson said. "But that technology is needed for 5 percent of what a farm does. There are so many applications for tractors on farms that don't require technology. The technology that goes into even a calculator is not required for most farming applications."
[...] Ursa Ag markets its tractors as "no frills" and "built to last." Ursa Ag's Doug Wilson told me that the company designed the tractor because of a need in the marketplace for a new machine that isn't loaded with tech and is easy to maintain. The company follows in the footsteps of consumer electronics companies like Fairphone, which makes a repairable smartphone and Framework, which makes modular, repairable laptops. The demand Ursa Ag has seen is part of the backlash to manufacturer repair monopolies and the injection of technology and internet-connected sensors and terms of use into even the most basic of gadgets. "I talk to farmers every day and I hear from farmers every day about how they went out and bought machinery from 1987 so that it wouldn't have a computer on it," Wilson said. "All of this came from a simple discussion with a customer who wanted to be able to turn [the tractor] on at the start of the day, to use it, and shut it off at the end of the day. It needed to work, so that's what we built."
Ursa Ag's tractor has been hyped in agriculture circles after Wilson showed the tractor off at a Canadian farm show and it was featured by Farms.com. Wilson said more than a thousand farmers have contacted him after that show, from roughly 30 countries. "I got a handwritten letter from a farmer in France who doesn't own a computer and wanted us to mail him information about the tractors," he said. He said the company has thus far made a couple fewer than 100 tractors but is working on tripling its production capacity and has seen a lot of demand over the last few months. "Given the number of my customers that carry flip phones, I would say there is consumer pressure to back away from some of the technology that is unnecessary to perform everyday tasks," Wilson said. "So that is definitely transferable to dishwashers and washing machines, refrigerators. Refrigerators that have screens on them that'll tell you what's inside. It's a little crazy."
"That high-tech stuff, the million-dollar John Deere tractor has a place. It has technology that is well worth the money," Wilson said. "But that technology is needed for 5 percent of what a farm does. There are so many applications for tractors on farms that don't require technology. The technology that goes into even a calculator is not required for most farming applications."
Capitalism wins again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be clear: Attempting to prevent the customers that 'bought' your product from repairing them is NOT capitalism.
Capitalism is all about the free market. When you try to enslave your 'customers', forcing them to come to you to repair rather than competing on the open market for repair work, you are not a capitalist. You are at best a plutocrat.
People want freedom, not to be owned by the company they thought they were buying stuff from.
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:5, Insightful)
you are not a capitalist.
Nothing is more capitalist than trying to maximize your revenue. It's someone else's job to prevent you from doing it if it harms the market. Regulation is either a feature of capitalism or a check on it, depending on how you look at it.
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:5, Interesting)
Regulation is a check.
According to control theory you have three outcomes for a process, it grows unchecked to infinity (or until physical boundaries are reached), it stabilises, or it goes to zero.
For some reason, people think that because of 'money' this does not apply to these processes.
A stable process is a regulated process. That doesn't mean regulation is simple.
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Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Nothing is more capitalist than trying to maximize your revenue."
a) The motivation under capitalism is maximizing profits, not revenue.
b) John Deere isn't trying to maximize their profits either; they're trying to minimize the profits of others. That's comes from a belief that all transactions are zero sum, which is definitely NOT part of capitalism.
Consider the scenario where you capture all of your customers' surplus, or all of your suppliers' surplus, plus one cent. Your customers not suppliers have no reason to say in business. At that point YOU are no longer capable of staying in business. Enlightened self-interest drives you to keep your customers and suppliers profitable.
However, the median businessman has no idea how capitalism works; at the 90th percentile they are actively opposed. At that point they are not capitalists, they revert to mercantilism.
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> a) The motivation under capitalism is maximizing profits, not revenue.
Profits and revenue are functionally the same for the purpose of most discussions, however yes it's a valid and often employed tactic to charge the same price while providing less value, which increases profits at the same level of revenue.
> Consider the scenario where you capture all of your customers' surplus...
From John Deere's perspective, the optimal strategy is to corner the market on farm equipment that are strictly necessa
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Regulation is either a feature of capitalism or a check on it, depending on how you look at it.
Regulation is neither. Capitalism exists in unregulated markets as much as in completely and heavily regulated markets.
The amount of regulation and its implementation is related to the concept of a free market which is an independent economic principle from what capitalism defines (ownership of the means of production).
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:5, Interesting)
Consistently amazed that Capitalism(TM) only has good characteristics and apparently no bad.
The only other thing that seems to come close is religon.
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:4, Interesting)
Consistently amazed that Capitalism(TM) only has good characteristics and apparently no bad.
The only other thing that seems to come close is religon.
Well, that kind of depends on whether or not you're the one that owns the capital...
Modified capitalism (Score:5, Interesting)
Consistently amazed that Capitalism(TM) only has good characteristics and apparently no bad.
The only other thing that seems to come close is religon.
The big critique about capitalism is wealth inequality - it invariably leads to some people getting most of the money, and everyone else getting very little money.
The problem with that critique is that wealth inequality is mathematically more fundamental than any economic system. In other words, any time there is trade in value, you will get wealth inequality regardless of the system.
You can see this in numerous simulations online, such as this one [nullism.com].
Wealth inequality follows a Boltzman distribution or a Pareto distribution, depending on the type of investments allowed, and this can be proven mathematically.
About 2.5 million books are published in the US each year, about the square root of that number (1500) break even in sales, and about the square root of *that* number (35) are best sellers. Lebron James scores 43,000 points in his career, Kobe Bryant scores 34,000 points, and there are a zillion players that score lesser values.
Wealth inequality happens any time you have trade in value, this can be proven mathematically, and it applies to any value in any system.
And as a side note, once you realize wealth inequality is inevitable, the main selling point of Communism disappears. Wealth inequality happens under Communism as well, and we have numerous examples of this in recent history.
To be fair, this wasn't known when Marx was writing his thesis. At that time (1850's), economics hadn't progressed as far as it has today. Marx himself had a degree in law and philosophy, and not economics or psychology.
Capitalism has a bunch of bad characteristics, but we try to modify it to reduce the damage. For example, you can't sell patent medicines any more, you can't sell fake stock shares, and so on.
We use a modified version of capitalism that tries to avoid the bad characteristics.
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Wealth inequality happens any time you have trade in value, this can be proven mathematically, and it applies to any value in any system.
Wealth inequality is desirable.
The person who is smarter/stronger/harder working should have more wealth than the person who sits around smoking weed and masturbating all day. The thing is, it is not US (people) that should be deciding what others should own, it should be 'nature' that decides. That means the smart/strong/harder working person may not end up with more wealth because they were infected by a parasite that stole their eyesight.
It doesn't matter which economic system is used, it needs to not be
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be clear: Attempting to prevent the customers that 'bought' your product from repairing them is NOT capitalism. Capitalism is all about the free market.
If we're going to be clear, "capitalism" doesn't have a clear definition. It's used differently in different contexts, often with the meaning of "not communism."
It's better to use a different word. For example, you could have said, "The free market wins again" since that is what you actually meant.
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"Ya meh taek are lives..... but ya'll never taek are freedum!"
*shakes fist in air*
*buys Canadian tractor*
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but that is the end state of capitalism. Capitalism rewards business that can build competitive advantage, which includes barriers to entry for competitors. You may start out with a "free market" but most of the participants in that free market are trying as hard as they can to slant it towards themselves - to make it less free- and those that don't tend to lose out to those that do.
You can have laws to regulate the market, but wealth confers power and power can be used to shape the laws as well as fight them in the courts. And if you can persuade the public that their success is somehow tied to your success, then democracy is subverted as well.
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Let's be clear: Attempting to prevent the customers that 'bought' your product from repairing them is NOT capitalism.
What? I don't think you know what capitalism is.
Capitalism is all about the free market.
Oh, I was right. You don't know what capitalism is.
Capitalism means one and only one thing: Capital controls the means of production. There are many kinds of capitalism, and "free market" capitalism is only one of them. Regulatory capture is absolutely an expected aspect of capitalism.
People want freedom, not to be owned by the company they thought they were buying stuff from.
Yes, but that's irrelevant to the question of whether or not this is capitalism. Not just slightly, but completely. It has absolutely no place in that discussion.
Monopolies are capitalism. (Score:2)
Let's be clear: Attempting to prevent the customers that 'bought' your product from repairing them is NOT capitalism.
Capitalism is all about the free market. When you try to enslave your 'customers', forcing them to come to you to repair rather than competing on the open market for repair work, you are not a capitalist. You are at best a plutocrat.
People want freedom, not to be owned by the company they thought they were buying stuff from.
Erm. that is capitalism, it's the ultimate expression of capitalism. Monopoly is the end game of capitalism. If you can literally prevent your customers from going elsewhere and being dependent on you for all future maintenance, upgrades, et al. you have the holy grail of capitalism.
Never confuse market liberalism with capitalism. A free market is not, by any means, a prerequisite for capitalism.
A strong legal system preventing abuse is the defence against that form of capitalism and what enables a fr
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> Capitalism is all about the free market.
This is a lie that Capitalists tell to make Capitalism sound less evil.
Capitalism is about making money. It's right there in the name. The idea is that a free market would enable those who are best at making money to make the most money, but you know what's even more effective at making money than investing in a better product for a better price? Investing in kneecapping your competition and creating a captured market where people are functionally *forced* to buy
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Actually, *this* is capitalism. Deere tried to assert control over their machines in a way farmers didn't like. So somebody else is providing machines that don't include that control, and people who like that feature are buying his instead. Capitalism in its purest form.
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Let's be clear: Attempting to prevent the customers that 'bought' your product from repairing them is NOT capitalism.
No, this is *exactly* capitalism. It just is not the fairy-tale version of capitalism you learned in your high school civics class. Capitalism is not "all about the free market." Markets are the arena where capitalism operates. Capital is the player trying to own the arena, buy the referee, lock the gates, and charge rent on the exits. Adam Smith understood this problem perfectly well, and warned against it in "The Wealth of Nations." Capitalists aren't trying to preserve competition out of civic virtue. Q
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:4, Informative)
Capitalism is about people benefiting from improving capital, which is basically private property rights.
Money != capital.
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure what improving capital means.
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:4, Insightful)
You buy some flour for a dollar. You use that flour to bake bread. You sell that bread for two dollars.
Why the price increase? Because you've improved the capital.
Re: Capitalism wins again. (Score:3)
If you spent time and labor carefully stirring the flour, singing to it, sorting it into little piles and combining those piles, you would still only have a dollar worth of flour no matter how much time and labor you spent.
If you poured the flour into a bread making machine (one capable of matching the quality of the bread you could produce by hand) and napped for a few hours while it did its work, you could still sell the bread for two bucks, even though you hadnâ(TM)t invested significant time and la
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Capital is the means of production, minus land and labour. It's fairly comprehensive to think of it as all the tools, procedures, etc. that make up a business, whether that business is one guy in the yard of his hut or a multinational corporation. It's reasonable to think of a business itself as a machine, and the machine is capital.
Improving capital means making it work better. Designing and building better tools and procedures to produce whatever you're producing more efficiently. If you take some funny r
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:5, Informative)
If they would only do this with CARS and JEEPS again.....simple, mechanical...without all the fucking tech, something in 60-70's area of tech....I'd be one of the first in line.
It was nice to be a shade tree mechanic and work on your own vehicles on the weekends....
I guess maybe having just Bluetooth in the radio to hook my phone to to stream music..but shy of that I don't need cars that phone home, nor have internet, or require software updates...fuck all that.
Hell I don't even need a backup camera....I never use them on cars that have them anyway....so far, mine don't.
You'll like it until you don't (Score:3)
Ahem....back to tractors one can own and self repair made simply and just works...
If they would only do this with CARS and JEEPS again.....simple, mechanical...without all the fucking tech, something in 60-70's area of tech....I'd be one of the first in line.
It was nice to be a shade tree mechanic and work on your own vehicles on the weekends....
I guess maybe having just Bluetooth in the radio to hook my phone to to stream music..but shy of that I don't need cars that phone home, nor have internet, or require software updates...fuck all that.
Hell I don't even need a backup camera....I never use them on cars that have them anyway....so far, mine don't.
Typical nostalgia story. You must have forgotten how many repairs were made when you were a kid. My 15 year old prius has never failed once. I have only taken it in for routine maintenance: oil changes, AC recharging, bulbs replaced, battery changed every few years. It's never broken down or failed to start or made a funny noise and I live in a frozen hellhole. When I was a kid, this level of reliability was UNHEARD of. My parent's Chevy's were being repaired constantly. We knew the local auto mecha
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Earth is a BIG planet.....I PROMISE I won't drive anywhere near you and your lungs....
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:4, Informative)
While money != capital, capitalism isn't basically about improving anything. It's about using the capital you have (i.e. stuff that's under your control, which includes money) to increase the amount of capital you have. This often improves things for at least some subset of the people, but that's a side effect, and if it's missing, what is described is still capitalism.
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Markets cannot exist without capitalism. A market doesn't make sense if there is no concept of personal ownership.
"I'll give you three apples for this orange please. Those apples don't belong to you, I'll take them for nothing. Goodbye."
Re:Capitalism wins again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Start reading your history book starting with a palace economy. Then check in every few thousand years until you get to capitalism.
As for personal ownership, also existed before capitalism. And the argument is a bit of a red herring as I neither confirmed or denied that there is personal ownership. Although I will assert that without regulation you can't have a fair and free market, you'll just end up with various iterations of self-dealing and Phoebus cartel.
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The palace owns the means of production. The rest you can read in the appropriate economics book referenced.
Re: Capitalism wins again. (Score:4, Insightful)
What on earth makes you think capitalism is the only system that involves the concept of personal ownership?
Re: Capitalism wins again. (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you own a shovel or a chicken? Congratulations, those are means of production. You're a capitalist!
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No, that's not (necessarily) capitalism. For example, we had ownership in medieval times in the UK... Did we have capitalism? No. We had feudalism. In China, you have the concept of personal ownership. Do they have capitalism? No - they have a corruption of communism. Hell, North Korea has personal ownership. Do they have capitalism? No - they have a dictatorship. Russia has personal ownership. Do they have capitalism? No - they have an oligarchy. Nazi Germany had personal ownership. Capitalis
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Markets existed before capitalism.
Long before.
As capitalism has nothing to do with the concept of ownership.
Capitalism as the name implies means: money is power.
Owning a house, or a sword, a horse or a slave: is not money. Why is it not money? Oh you can not carry your house to a place and sell it there. You can not have a bank account fill with houses, and invest them into a 5 years delivery plan of grain. Doing business without money, or as ersatz: gold, is complicated.
When money got invented, many things
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While true, that's like saying dirt can't exist without gravity.
Capitalism existed long before markets existed, and markets existed before people did. Fish cleaners staking out a site for their business in the ocean is a market. An amoeba storing resources for later use is capitalism in action. (I.e. it's getting stuff now for later use, accumulating capital.)
Most of the things that people attribute to capitalism are only the property of one "dialect" of capitalism. And corporate capitalism is itself a
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How Do They Make Money? (Score:4, Insightful)
So many questions.
We've been told that without subscription models, you can't run a business as you'll never make the money.
We've been told you can't get funding to start a business without a recurring revenue model as no one will buy in.
Of course we all knew the reality. Its nice to see a company actually do this knowing their revenue won't be maxxed out, but it will still be a profitable business.
Can we get a car like this? Can we get congress to pass a law that says we can have a car like this?
--
Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Re: How Do They Make Money? (Score:2)
What were more likely to see is Congress passing a law to somehow ban this.
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This. This is how Congress kills Capitalism in the name of "Freedom, Liberty and American Values". As Raghuram Rajan put it, we have to save "Capitalism from the Capitalists."
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It will fall under "national security" or some other bullshit. John Deere won't go down without a fight.
Re:How Do They Make Money? (Score:5, Informative)
Farmer here.
Yeah their profits won't be as high as John Deere. But they can still make at least $20k-$30k profit on each tractor they sell. By the way mainline dealerships don't make much money on new tractors either but they do make a lot of money on used sales. Anyway they won't be selling tremendously high volumes (they simply don't have the capacity to assemble them very quickly), so they aren't going to get fantastically rich doing this. But they are filling a niche.
I've actually seen these tractors and sat in them. They are bare bones machines. Cab comfort is reasonable. You can install a third-part GPS guidance system in them. Transmission is simple but rugged, and a common transmission overseas. Completely manual with a high-low power shift. Engine is claimed to be a genuine Cummins 8.3L (more on this below). Hydraulic and 3 pt controls are all manual linkages. Would make a good chore tractor. They seem to be decent quality.
I wish they'd be a little more forthcoming about some things, though. They don't make the tractor; they assemble it. With the possible exception of the engine, the entire thing is manufactured in China with the color and decal scheme they chose. You can find this same tractor from numerous vendors on Alibaba. I have heard, that they are using genuine reman engines in these tractors.
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I agree there is a market for a mid-power tractor like this. As long as it has hydraulics for the front-end attachments, a decent 3 point control for the back, and a reliable PTO shaft for powered devices, I think many small farms would welcome something like this.
The closest a typical homeowner would get to these would be a riding lawn mower. If the brake pedal breaks, do you want to call Troy-bilt, wait a week for a custom brake assembly, then wait for the technician to come calibrate the brake pressure
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Hydraulics for front end attachments are bolt on, with PTO driven pumps.
Internal hydraulics for the three point hitch on the back do most of the work.
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I have heard, that they are using genuine reman engines in these tractors.
So that's where all the P-Pumped 6CTs are going? Fuckers.
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No they are using Tier 4, late model 8.3s, probably the QSC series.
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I don't think you understand what farmers are complaining about, nor do you seem to understand how modern tractors are put together. In this case they mean the operation of the tractor itself requires no computer control (other than the self-contained engine). No tractor CAN bus, no electric over hydraulic controls, no digital electric cab controls of any kind. Everything is mechanically linked. Gear shift lever, clutch, hydraulic controls, steering, etc. No computers involved whatever. The engine itse
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Wow that's pretty cool you allow slashdot to show you ads. Very loyal of you!
Not sure why you would think Alibaba is blocked in the US. Many businesses in the US import goods from Chinese manufacturers, often through B2B transactions on Alibaba. As the importer they pay duties and tariff taxes to the US government.
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Can we get a car like this? Can we get congress to pass a law that says we can have a car like this?
Well, this tractor is made in Canada... so it'd be parliament that would pass that law.
But, if (as I assume) you are located in the United States - there's no guarantee you can even get a tractor like this.
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I'd written something similar earlier....make some cars and jeeps this simple, go back to 60's - 70's tech maybe....where you can work on your vehicles on your own on the weekend.
No need for uber tech, no telemetry and over the air updates....
I for one would kill for a modern day CJ7....simple gas engine that is bulletproof....and well, not that much else.....
Hell, give me a '76 TransAm....big engine, no
I was I was a lobbyist (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Deere is going to be paying big bucks to lobby every government in the world to apply strict emission control standards on tractors that will be impossible to meet without all their electonics.
Re:I was I was a lobbyist (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think electronic ignition and pollution control is the computer they are talking about here. That's been pretty fare for the past 30 years now. It's the electronics tied to the mother ship that is not included.
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pretty "standard" fare
jeez, how about an edit button /.?
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jeez, how about an edit button /.?
It's right there next to the Submit button. It says "preview". Then you edit.
Unless of course you're on mobile. It's shit in that way. But then, literally everything about the mobile interface is shit.
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The Ursa tractor has a Cummins 8.3L engine in it that already must meet emissions standards. The engine itself has an ECU and if it does have DEF dosing, it's done by a Bosch ECU. But that's all self-contained. The rest of the tractor has no electronics except 12V to run the AC, lights, etc.
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Oh and many diesel shops can easily remove the DEF system and reprogram the engine ECU to run reliably.
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Strange how this is only a problem in the USA.
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And import bans to stop people buying Chinese electric tractors that have zero emissions and are easy to repair. For lighter duty work people have been importing them for a few years now.
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This is already going to happen. California has announced emissions standards for agricultural vehicles.
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Because Deere is going to be paying big bucks to lobby every government in the world to apply strict emission control standards on tractors that will be impossible to meet without all their electonics.
They don't want "strict" emissions controls because then they'll have to make products that meet those standards. What they want is a specific loophole that they can easily meet but is difficult or expensive for everyone else, such as a critical "safety feature" that John Deere owns the patent of.
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What are you talking about? In Canada and the US agricultural diesel engines have to meet the same pollution control standards as on-the-road engines do. All diesel engines of a certain size have to meet EPA tier 4 limits for NOx and particulates. And starting in about 2024, Tier 5 came in. This Ursa tractor is no different. I must meet Tier 4 also. If regulations for agricultural engines were relaxed, Deere and others would happily sell tractors without DEF, EGR, and DPF. In fact in countries without
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The market for electric tractors is incredibly small. They certainly do fill a small niche, though. Chore tractors for feeding cattle, small excavators, etc. See a US company called Nesher Equipment [nesherequipment.com], for example.
Meanwhile for broad-acre tillage,planting, and harvesting, your average machine has at least 500L of fuel that lasts a day or two (or much less for some operations), which is, counting for thermal efficiency, the equivalent of at least 2500 kWh of battery storage.
Let's hope (Score:2)
Let's hope this becomes a common trend amongst all manufacturing sectors.
I want a passenger car like that (Score:3)
No infotaiment or GPS, maybe an AM/FM radio. Optional cruse control. I'd live with hand cranked widows, but some sort of air conditioning would be nice. Pick some second party sourced drive train and engine. Only open source microprocessor hardware/software.
Time to take my meds because I'm clearly hitting a manic phase and need to come down.
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Interesting. Now, make an ICE version. I live rural and charging stations are very few and far between. The nearest is 20 miles away, but several gas stations are available within 3-5 miles.
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Where do I sign up?.
No infotaiment or GPS, maybe an AM/FM radio. Optional cruse control. I'd live with hand cranked widows, but some sort of air conditioning would be nice. Pick some second party sourced drive train and engine. Only open source microprocessor hardware/software.
I have every intention of driving my 1990 car until I am too old to drive. Hand cranked windows, but it has A/C. It also has AWD and a manual transmission. Real gauges. EFI so the emissions are decent and it doesn't get gummed up with carbon or detonate if it gets a bad batch of fuel. IMHO cars peaked in the 1990-2010 time frame, depending on the manufacturer.
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Just buy a Japanese car from about 1990-1994 and you're there. OBD-II didn't become mandatory until 1996, but some 1995 models have it too like in the Nissan 240SX. 1994 is the last OBD-I model there. These vehicles tend to have sequential fuel injection and the only emissions equipment is EGR and an O2 sensor for mixture control. They are easy to megasquirt and in some cases you can even buy a premade harness. One advantage of a vehicle like this is that even in California you're allowed to use aftermarket
It's complicated (Score:5, Interesting)
As a farmer I can say there is some definite demand for a tractor like this. However I am skeptical that expressed interest will translated into demand for thousands of units. Farmers are an odd bunch. They complain about the high cost of machinery, and the right to repair, but in the end things like cab comfort and ease of operation (CVT!) carry a ton of weight. Farmers say they hate all the electronics, but they really love GPS autosteer and features like automatic gear selection and throttle control, or the ease of using electric-over-hydraulic implement control.
Some years ago I was interested in the Kirovets K744 tractor made in Russia. It's widely used in FSB countries and is designed for ease of maintenance and repair, and it's a proven machine. But even without Putin's war that pretty much killed access to them, in the end even at half the price of an equivalent north American machine, it was still a difficult sell here. The transmission controls were very different from anything we're used to, and some of the design was just, well, soviet. The dealer was very responsive, but they covered a very wide area, which is a concern compared to the mainline dealerships.
Ursa will sell some tractors, no doubt. Hopefully word of mouth will tell us that they are reliable and useful tractors.
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European and Chinese companies have electric tractors. Very simple to operate, very easy to maintain. Yes, even the battery packs.
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Thinking of which, can the tractor be remotely disabled by the owner if the Russian army invades and steals the tractor?
That turned out to be necessary after Russia attacked Ukraine.
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The Kirovets tractor? No of course not. Other than the ECU itself on the German engine, there are no electronics on that tractor. No CAN bus, no cell modem.
Deere tractors (and the other major brands), on the other hand, all now ship with cell modems that continuously report in to the mother ship to enable subscriptions for things like syncing GPS lines and coverage data between tractors working in the same field, or sending jobs from the OpCenter to the various tractors. This serves a very real purpose for
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Isn't the Kirovets also a massive fuel sucker even by tractor standards? For that matter, did they ever incorporate an oil control ring?
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I cannot speak to the original V8 engine. To my knowledge that engine is still used in Russia and other FSB countries. However, that was not the engine they were using in the K744 they were selling here, which had to meet Tier 4 emissions controls. For north America and Europe, Kirovets used a standard 6-cylinder Mercedes engine that was Tier 4 compliant. Comparable fuel burn to FPT, Cummins, etc.
Itâ(TM)s not Canadian made (Score:5, Interesting)
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The largest Zetor tractor is 148 HP. The Ursa tractors are 180 and 260 hp, considered class 7 tractors. Zetor appears to only make class 5 and 6. So different markets.
Surely Open Tech is better then No Tech? (Score:3)
Who knew (Score:2)
People want tech that just works and does not stand in their way and make them jump through hoops.
GPS (Score:2)
I've a friend who runs one of those Gazillion $$$ combines. He's said it before," I NEED air conditioning, and GPS. Everything else is BS."
We were talking about the BS JD pulls and his comment seemed to fit this room. I don't know anything about farming or tractors but that stuck in my head.
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GPS is an overloaded word. It could just be a map with position, or it could be a level 2 self driving system which can maintain synchronization with a grain cart ... in the latter case it's already massively automated and everything else is in the margins.
Story Facts Unclear (Score:2)
The story implies that this company is offering a new and unique product that is repairable and less expensive. The implication is that there was no such option until now.
But, while most popular tractors are very tech heavy and fairly non-repairable, there have been and continue to be options that were relatively inexpensive and low-tech. Mahindra is one such option. They offer tractors that are half the price of the Deeres, little or no tech, and no repair restrictions.
So what makes this particular story's
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No Mahindra is in a different market entirely, like Zetor. This is the first class 7 tractor introduced in North America that's not from the major players. And it's not exactly "made in Canada" (unlike Versatile which actually mostly is), it's assembled in Canada. It's manufactured in China. That said, I'm impressed he can assemble so many tractors in his tiny shop.
John Deere DOESN'T want farmers to fix on own (Score:2)
Happily ever after (Score:2)
tech: "We need an internet connection for that."
Marketing: "Sure, just use 4G!"
tech: fields often do not have good 4G coverage.
Marketing: "So we need a holistic approach, we need to
CEO: "think about subscription services!"
And they all lived happily ever after.
... except for the tech guy.
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Rural ISPs often wire up farms as a core part of their business. I remember when Cambium released a firmware that allowed for the Canopy series of fixed wireless broadband gear that allowed for a CPE to slowly physically move, doing all of the re-ranging and what not to allow it to be, to a very small extent, mobile. Why? So that an SM could be mounted to a tractor.
It's also where you learn that corn silk really fucks up with 5 ghz RF.
How about... optional tech? (Score:3)
Look out for tariffs (Score:2)
No tech? (Score:3)
It's not "no tech", a tractor is by very definition a piece of technology. It's just a deliberately simpler piece of technology, and which does not implement intentionally user hostile features.
Some tech is genuinely beneficial for the user, but anything designed solely for the manufacturer's benefit at the expense of the paying customer is abhorrent. You bought the device, it should be yours to do with as you please, it shouldn't do anything to artificially restrict you.
Useful repairable technology (Score:3)
Technology can improve things, but, if you remove the ability to use those things, or to trust them, you've done a disservice to the item. I don't need a Wi-Fi connected dishwasher or oven. I don't need a Wi-Fi connected electrical panel. What I need is an oven that can turn on, and turn off, with a temperature setting.
Farm equipment doesn't need to be "smart", it needs to be functional. Your engine won't start, spray some ether in it, and bam, you're up and running. A belt broke, meh, just grab another, slap it on and get going. This stupidity of make it smart, and brick it, doesn't make sense. When our dishwasher broke a few months ago, I just bought a new motor (if that's the right word), disassembled it and reassembled it within 1-hour.
Re: but farmers like to be lazy (Score:4, Informative)
Um, if there's one group that's not lazy, it's farmers.
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They're also massive hypocrites. Most are Trump voters who themselves employ questionable labor. They'll gladly accept those government subsidy checks while complaining about "socialism" and handouts. Now diesel is at the highest price ever directly because of their actions.
Fear not, they'll do it all over again given the chance.
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They're also massive hypocrites. Most are Trump voters who themselves employ questionable labor.
"We didn't think they would deport OUR Mexicans"
Then we're supposed to believe that farmers aren't stupid.
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As a farmer I can say you're not wrong there... It's just that our kind of laziness involves 16 hour days.
For what this Ursa tractor would be most used for, which would be a chore tractor lifting bales, etc, GPS isn't needed. For other kinds of farm work, though, adding GPS to it would be a given. There are many options for adding GPS guidance, so that's not a problem.
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That's the sort of feature that could be added on a machine without the need of being integrated so tightly that if it fails the rest of the machine is disabled. Modular design is nothing new.