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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: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @09:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @09:00AM (#439631)

    Brawndo.

    Idiocracy.

    Fuck u i'm bating!

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aiwarrior on Saturday December 10 2016, @09:35AM

    by aiwarrior (1812) on Saturday December 10 2016, @09:35AM (#439635) Journal

    As any mobile vehicle designer will tell you, the constraints are not always related to range but also endurance. Of course a tractor does not need to go far, it needs to work all day from Sun to Sun. Time vs Distance -> [J]/[Km] vs [J]/[s]

    On a slightly unrelated note, in Aircraft, the speed and Lift/Drag configurations are different if you are aiming at maximum endurance or at maximum range. Also in one configuration you will sacrifice the other.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:04AM (#439637)

      With the advent of modern farming with automated control, I get the strong idea that tractor run hours are no longer tethered to sunlight hours.

      If anything, I could imagine tractors being powered from overhead wire pantographs... and I am talking BIG tractors, probably looking more like buildings than the big three-wheeled thingies we see in our kid-books...as there may well be a thousand acres under cultivation and the growing cycles of crops demand timely attention.

      I have left automated factories churning away making product... in the dark. The lights were there just for us humans when we come in to inspect or fix something. The machines did not need the light, and any light the machines did need was supplied by specialized illuminators so the light levels could be carefully controlled for insuring repeatability.

      I kinda cringe to think of a modern *industrial* farm running like Grandpa did it. Now, a family farm, different modus operandi. Grandpa ran a family farm. One is like an industrial brewery that runs more like an oil refinery, whereas the latter is more like a family microbrewery or moonshine still. Big difference in the cost per unit produced. The mass produced stuff has a marginal cost of production approaching zero. Almost zero times a huge number can be a pretty big number too.

      • (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.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (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]

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:42PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:42PM (#439703)

      One answer to that may come from solving another limitation.

      Tractors are typically equipped with removable weights, because the balance between increasing capability and limiting ground loading changes by time of year, soil type, and climate. The weights that let you do more work most of the year may dig ruts if you get into the field early in the spring. And if you match a diesel tractor's weight, with the same detachable weights, you don't have much battery, but most of the time have pointless metal weights attached.

      So the right answer is clearly to make the battery system modular, so when you do want to increase the weight, you do it by adding modules and increasing your endurance. And once you do that, the solution to range limitations is obvious -- a trailer full of charged battery modules, complete with a crane to assist in swapping them.

      Similar battery-swap concepts are difficult to implement for electric cars, but several major hurdles wouldn't apply to tractors:

      • Automotive systems face compatibility issues (Can you imagine a gas station that could only refuel Fords? A battery-swap robot could be even worse, and only work on certain models.) and chicken-egg issues (though some manufacturers are addressing this by designing their cars for swappability already) -- these are both eliminated if you buy the equipment with the tractor.
      • Automotive systems also tend to consider swapping the whole battery, thus having to handle more weight than this modular system. This does cost us time for a full swap, but we have to swap one module at a time anyway to weight/unweight the tractor.
      • Since cars are about passenger and cargo space, which must be accessible from human height, and since putting batteries on the roof has... unfortunate effects on handling, batteries end up being installed from below, making things complicated and expensive. But tractors could have batteries lowered in from the top with a simple crane.
  • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:21AM

    by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:21AM (#439642)

    Cows are a significant producer of methane emissions. How are we going to eliminate those, then?

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:08AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:08AM (#439652)

      Butt plugs. Makes for bigger cows too!

      Now, if we can keep them from floating away after they have grazed.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @07:07AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @07:07AM (#439924)

        Worse, they tend to approach a perfectly spherical dimension, confirming some of the very worst theories in physics.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @05:48AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @05:48AM (#440231)

          We have already been told in our college calculus courses to assume a spherical cow. This is how we get spherical cows.

    • (Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:23AM

      by iwoloschin (3863) on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:23AM (#439657)

      By eating them!

    • (Score: 1) by garrulus on Saturday December 10 2016, @01:00PM

      by garrulus (6051) on Saturday December 10 2016, @01:00PM (#439672)

      Cows and chickens are superfood, the white european race can't live without them succesfully.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @01:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @01:21PM (#439675)

      eat more chicken. seriously, the resources required to grow 1kg of chicken are much less than the resources required to grow 1kg of cow.
      besides, if you eat chicken, you're eating dinosaurs, which is cool.
      if you're eating cows, you're eating mamals and you're not that far from eating humans.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:37PM (#439699)

        But chickens eat stuff that we could eat. Cows can eat grass on/from land that's useless for anything else.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:02PM

          by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:02PM (#439711) Journal

          Chickens eat stuff we generally don't want to eat, like bugs.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @06:55PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @06:55PM (#439760)

          i just let chickens out of the coop for the first time in three days. (For reference, I'm in the Midwest, and it's 25°F (269 K) out.) They're running around eating grass, because they're sick of the corn-based feed they eat indoors. In late summer, they'll walk through the yard, stripping dandelion puffballs of their seeds before the wind can get them. Any time they're available, they delight in bugs of all sorts. (One in particular likes to stay out in the evening catching fireflies on the wing.) One fat Buff Orpington catches field-mice whenever she can (not often, as fat Orpingtons are slow and clumsy) and, with much straining, swallows them whole. My point is, chickens are absolutely omnivores.

          Some breeds of chickens are actually quite good at foraging on more-or-less useless land (in the summer, or climate permitting year-round), but of course, industrially produced chicken comes from special hybrid birds that gain about a pound per week, and live on feed made mostly from grain.

          Likewise, cattle can be raised to market on otherwise-useless grassland -- but industrially produced beef spend about half their lives on feedlots, being fed roughly one part grain and two parts roughage. The roughage can come from waste products such as corn stalks, but it can also come from grain-competing crops like alfalfa.

          Either way, it seems to be economically advantageous to grow the feed over a wide area, then feed it to a condensed animal population, rather than distributing the animals over the ground necessary to feed them. And, at least with the current system of subsidies, taxation, etc., that benefit seems to outweigh the benefit of being able to use less valuable land for pasture.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:27PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:27PM (#439772)

          Cows can eat grass on/from land that's useless for anything else.

          Right. Here's news for you. Lots of cow diet is non-grass these days, at least in places like US. Where do you think all that corn is going? Hint: it goes to ethanol plants and then the protein residue goes to cattle (non-fermented corn is even worse). That's how you get the nasty strains of E.coli. too.

      • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:01PM

        by hemocyanin (186) on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:01PM (#439710) Journal

        Yes -- I call it the dinosaur diet (fowl and fish)

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:38PM (#439700)

      > Cows are a significant producer of methane emissions. How are we going to eliminate those, then?

      Beyond meat [beyondmeat.com] and Impossible Foods [npr.org] - vegetarian meat replacements with heme which makes veggie burgers and tacos indistinguishable from beef versions. [vox.com] In addition, no anti-biotics and no hormones. You can buy them at whole foods and walmart.

      Or you can feed the cows seaweed. [modernfarmer.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:14PM (#439814)

      Cows are a significant producer of methane emissions. How are we going to eliminate those, then?

      Solved problem.

      http://www.sciencealert.com/adding-seaweed-to-cattle-feed-could-reduce-methane-production-by-70 [sciencealert.com]

      Also, possible to reduce this to almost 100% reduction.

      As for the uninformed, cows don't "fart" methane. They belch it. Methane is produced in their first stomach that's used to ferment the feed.

  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by bradley13 on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:23AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:23AM (#439643) Homepage Journal

    At least they're honest, with the zero "local" emissions stuff. Because that electricity is going to come from somewhere, and the whopping batteries required by a tractor use lots of interesting materials dug out of someone's back yard, and processed in someone else's back yard.

    Frankly, I am increasingly convinced that hydrocarbons are just about the best fuel solution we have. We already have the infrastructure to distribute them, they burn nicely in all of the (mature technology) hydrocarbon engines that we have. Why not put renewable energy source to work producing hydrocarbons, i.e., using them as the storage medium?

    Too many renewable energy types are determined to reduce everyone's standard of living. People are not going to accept this. Just as an example: There's a local project to convince people to let their heating be controlled by the availability of renewable energy on the grid. So, during the day, your house heats up because there's plenty of solar energy. During the evening and night, you're then not allowed to heat. If you have a house with average insulation, you would spend half your time hot, and the other half cold. People are not going to accept this crap - this is not the way to sell renewable energy.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:40AM

      by Aiwendil (531) on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:40AM (#439645) Journal

      Why not put renewable energy source to work producing hydrocarbons, i.e., using them as the storage medium?

      Both RME and HVO diesel (both renewable) are common here in sweden (two thirds of public transport (87% in stockholm county) runs on renewable fuels [incl ethanol])

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:24PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:24PM (#439715)

        Both RME and HVO diesel (both renewable) are common here in sweden (two thirds of public transport (87% in stockholm county) runs on renewable fuels [incl ethanol])

        Wait, wait, wait, wait.

        Ethanol-fueled is Swedish?

        *grin*

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by BsAtHome on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:46AM

      by BsAtHome (889) on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:46AM (#439646)

      Too many renewable energy types are determined to reduce everyone's standard of living. People are not going to accept this.

      The real problem is that if all people in the world use the same amount of energy as we have become used to in the "west", then this earth is not big enough. Either you have to do with less and share, or you actively deprive your fellow earthling the privilege you enjoy. The sum of energy consumption for all of earth's population, regardless how we get it, is a finite measure. We have already been using more than is good for us using fossil fuels.

      So, either you reduce your consumption to your fair share(*) or you keep the competition down by depriving it from a fair share. I guess the latter will not be looked upon with great enthusiasm by those you deprive.

      (*) fair share is defined as the amount the earth can sustain for the global population divided by the population.

      • (Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:13AM

        by aiwarrior (1812) on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:13AM (#439654) Journal

        Or you know, You compensate the increased numbers earthlings with better efficiency all around, just a possibility... Maybe recycling becomes economically more practical also, just...another possibility before Eugenics or mass economical control a-la Sovietic style.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheLink on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:16PM

          by TheLink (332) on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:16PM (#439714) Journal

          You compensate the increased numbers earthlings with better efficiency all around, just a possibility

          There's a limit to how much efficiency will get you, unless you mean efficiency as in not actually doing certain stuff in the first place or not having those extra humans.

          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.
          2) If everyone wants a car of a certain level of capacity and safety, it will consume significant amount of energy and resources.

          If I don't have children I can drive a Humvee for the rest of my life and still use less total resources than someone who had 2 children who each had 2 children who each had 2 children etc. Even if those children only rode bicycles around. My footprint would be "wide" but it would be very short.

          However assuming we don't take the population reduction path, there are two non-exclusive solutions to the problem of having a high population:
          a) Get off this planet and use other resources
          b) Convincing/conditioning the masses to be satisfied with virtual Circuses. The Bread has to be real but the Circuses don't.

          Option a) is not really that possible at the moment and it would actually take too much resources to get billions of people off the planet- it would be more of off-planet population growth in space colonies.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:32PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:32PM (#439717)

            "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

              by Unixnut (5779) on Saturday December 10 2016, @08:06PM (#439783)

              > 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.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @12:21PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @12:21PM (#439664)

        How about the third and most-obvious solution? Reduce the population.

        If we don't do it voluntarily, then there will always be a large part of humanity that is suffering. Eventually disease, pestilence, and famine will keep our numbers in check if we don't.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @12:50PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @12:50PM (#439671)

          clearly the answer is carpet bombing poor countries.

          if you kill everyone nobody will be left to complain.

          • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @01:21PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @01:21PM (#439674)

            That's already happening.
            And it's happening because we are already fighting over resources.
            Because we already have too many people.
            Checkmate.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @01:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @01:27PM (#439677)

      Why not put renewable energy source to work producing hydrocarbons, i.e., using them as the storage medium?

      Apparently Germany already has a few industrial plants using the Sabatier reaction to produce methane from carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas produced from water electrolysis from excess renewable electricity.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @02:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @02:08PM (#439684)

      It only runs on John Deere Electricity (tm).

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:42PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:42PM (#439702)

      > If you have a house with average insulation, you would spend half your time hot, and the other half cold.

      Which is why, in your own damn country, building codes for insulation have been significantly improved over the last couple of decades.
      But mentioning that kind of undermines your entire argument doesn't it?
      Your intellectual dishonesty is pretty damn tiring.

      • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:14PM

        by bradley13 (3053) on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:14PM (#439713) Homepage Journal

        "Which is why, in your own damn country, building codes for insulation have been significantly improved over the last couple of decades. But mentioning that kind of undermines your entire argument doesn't it? Your intellectual dishonesty is pretty damn tiring."

        The thing is, dear AC: we do not raze and rebuild the country every couple of decades. The building I live in is 80 years old. I went shopping this morning, in two stores: one of those buildings is less than 10 years old; the other one is over 300 years old. Retrofitting insulation only works to a limited extent, especially on the oldest buildings.

        --
        Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @05:26PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @05:26PM (#439735)

          > I went shopping this morning, in two stores: one of those buildings is less than 10 years old; the other one is over 300 years old.

          So half the buildings were appropriately insulated to make this voluntary scheme work.
          When your own examples undermine your point you've pretty much lost the argument. Dear.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:20PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:20PM (#439771) Journal

      Well, the better way to do that would be to have a big, well-insulated tank. During the day, the solar energy is used to heat up the tank, and at night, the tank is used to heat up the house.

      But of course the best way to do it is not to use electricity for heating.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by RedBear on Saturday December 10 2016, @08:55PM

      by RedBear (1734) on Saturday December 10 2016, @08:55PM (#439793)

      At least they're honest, with the zero "local" emissions stuff. Because that electricity is going to come from somewhere, and the whopping batteries required by a tractor use lots of interesting materials dug out of someone's back yard, and processed in someone else's back yard.

      Absolutely correct. Fossil fuels are much better since they appear magically in our own backyards and require no transportation or processing whatsoever.

      Also, fossil fuels are definitely not subsidized. At all. The world doesn't subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of 5 trillion per year. Nope. Fossil fuels are super cheap.

      Frankly, I am increasingly convinced that hydrocarbons are just about the best fuel solution we have. We already have the infrastructure to distribute them, they burn nicely in all of the (mature technology) hydrocarbon engines that we have. Why not put renewable energy source to work producing hydrocarbons, i.e., using them as the storage medium?

      Boy, that sounds great. I'm sure we'll figure out how to mass produce 100 million barrels of hydrocarbon fuels per year by this time next week. And I'm sure we can all agree to continue pretending that burning hydrocarbons doesn't produce particulate pollution that causes smog, acid rain, and contribute to the early death of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year.

      Too many renewable energy types are determined to reduce everyone's standard of living. People are not going to accept this. Just as an example: There's a local project to convince people to let their heating be controlled by the availability of renewable energy on the grid. So, during the day, your house heats up because there's plenty of solar energy. During the evening and night, you're then not allowed to heat. If you have a house with average insulation, you would spend half your time hot, and the other half cold. People are not going to accept this crap - this is not the way to sell renewable energy.

      Yeah, the best possible way to do things is to strip all the insulation from our homes and use a hundred times as much energy to maintain a constant 70 degrees inside. Cost be damned, pollution be damned, we need to maintain our standard of living and show the rest of the world how awesome we are.

      And now back to reality:

      - Renewable energy is not somehow magically dirtier than fossil fuels.
      - Renewable energy is no longer more expensive than fossil fuels.
      - Renewable energy will NOT cause our utility bills to skyrocket.
      - We CANNOT continue to use the fossil fuels that are still in the ground without severely damaging our planet's climate for thousands of years.
      - "Liberals" are not out to enslave humanity and destroy everyone's quality of life by making energy too expensive to use. They just want a world where all of our descendants can survive and flourish.
      - It is ludicrously inefficient to waste renewable energy to create hydrocarbons when we can just directly dump that same energy into vastly more efficient electric propulsion systems.
      - Have you even heard of wind energy? It works quite well at night.
      - You are spreading unsupportable nonsense.

      --
      ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
      ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @01:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @01:07PM (#439960)

        And I'm sure we can all agree to continue pretending that burning hydrocarbons doesn't produce particulate pollution that causes smog, acid rain, and contribute to the early death of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year.

        This is much less of an issue with artificially produced hydrocarbons, than ones refined from oil pumped out of the ground.

        I don't think they are a solution to our problems, but don't rule them out for spurious reasons. Artificially produced hydrocarbons may be the best fit for some use cases.

  • (Score: 2) by tisI on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:27PM

    by tisI (5866) on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:27PM (#439698)

    Heavy equipment, tractors, are all hydraulic. Everything.
    The power plant doesn't matter. Diesel engine or electric motor.

    With renewable energy advancing across Europe, all electrics are a prefect fit.
    And if one day America ever catches up, they'll be way ahead of Cat with a full line of electrics.

    --
    "Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself."
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @03:48PM (#439705)

    "tractors are generally fairly short range vehicles that live in the same shed every night, making for convenient recharging."

    Um, no. Farmers generally leave their tractor in the field when it gets too dark to work. Driving an over-sized, slow-moving vehicle with minimal lighting and poor handling on the roads at night is dangerous. And many farmers (in the US, at least) have multiple properties, separated by miles of roads from their home.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @12:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @12:54AM (#439848)

    Reminded me of GE's Elec-Trak from the 70's.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elec-Trak/ [wikipedia.org]

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYYYSCqr9ZA/ [youtube.com]
    Other than replacing the batteries periodically, many seem to still be going strong!