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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday December 10 2016, @08:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the so-the-green-tractor-is-going-green? dept.

John Deere has released a video of an all-electric concept tractor in the lead-up to the SIMA Agribusiness show in France, pointing the way toward a zero-local-emissions tractor product in the future.

In some ways, tractors seem like an ideal candidate for electrification. Electric motors are great for generating the kinds of huge torque figures tractors require, and tractors are generally fairly short range vehicles that live in the same shed every night, making for convenient recharging. They're also very low-maintenance in comparison with diesel gear.

That's the thinking behind John Deere's SESAM (Sustainable Energy Supply for Agricultural Machinery) tractor, a gutted out JD 6R with a huge battery bank up front and dual electric motors developing up to 130 kilowatts (174 horsepower) of continuous power.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:14AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:14AM (#439641) Journal

    When growing plants inside, you don't need tractors. Tractors are for outdoor farming. Indeed, as soon as you have a supporting structure above your field, a tractor is a bad idea because it takes away worthy area for plant growth where its wheels go. If you already have an overhead structure anyway, better place robots on that.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:06AM

    by anubi (2828) on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:06AM (#439651) Journal

    Hydroponics... By the time one scales that up, with all conditions controlled, one is no longer confined to "seasons". It appears farming, like painting the Golden Gate bridge, would be a continuous process of harvest/planting ( Possibly along large circular rails? Whose radius is measured in kilometers? Stacked in huge cylindrical buildings? ).

    A big circular buffer, so to speak, sized to whatever maturation cycle the plant had been genetically engineered for.

    With robotic construction coming online, the effort of making such a thing looks primarily in the materials acquisition and design. The machines do most of the work.

    Brave new world.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @05:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @05:08PM (#439729)

      They already have big hydroponics farms like you describe. They load the plant in on one side and the crop comes out the other. However, they still have seasons due to the different amount of solar energy coming in. For example, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUvZEYlHkmQ [youtube.com]