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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:32PM
"1) If everyone wants 1kW of cooling/heating, better heatpumps may work but there's a limit of how efficient they can get. You are not going to be able to get 1000W heating/cooling with 10watts of power."
You can share that 1kW of cooling/heating. Kind of inevitable, with higher population density.
"2) If everyone wants a car of a certain level of capacity and safety, it will consume significant amount of energy and resources."
Public transportation. Also works better with higher population density.
In a lot of cities a car is not very useful. Parking, traffic congestion. On the rare occasions that you actually need a car (say, a family trip), you can rent one. It's the low-density areas that need cars.
Both of your points are kind of self-correcting. Feeding or smartphones would be much better examples, IMHO :)
(Score: 3, Touché) by Unixnut on Saturday December 10 2016, @08:06PM
> On the rare occasions that you actually need a car (say, a family trip), you can rent one.
This is constantly trotted out as a realistic option, when it isn't. For example. I live in the centre of one of the denser cities on earth. Nobody I know (apart from me) has a car, including the entire company I work for. There just isn't the space for it, and the congestion is such that you can get around faster on foot or by bike.
The solution to needing a car was what you described, car rentals. Things like "zipcar" came around. The problem with renting a car when you actually need one, is that you will find everyone else needs one at the same time.
For example. weekends. People don't take a family trip during the week, kids are at school and parents are at work. However weekends is when everyone want a trip.
What usually happens is that the cars sit unused almost all the time, and then 5% of the time everybody wants one. So what is the solution? Either you have enough cars on standby to satisfy peak demand (in which case you have not solved the congestion thing at all, just changed who owns the cars) or you use surge pricing to decide who gets to use the car (which will result in people just saying "screw it" and buying their own cars).
And it isn't just with car rentals. I was carless for a few months, and in theory I always have a public transport , cab or uber equivalent nearby. Problem is, say on a Friday night I want to go out to a friends place (out of range of public transport). Guess what, everything is booked, unless I wanted to wait 45 minutes for a 15 minute car journey, and even then there is no guarantee they would actually show up in 45 minutes, or show up at all in fact. .
When you need a car most, tends to be when everyone else needs one. So the "shared commons" thing really isn't going to work out.