+ 10 hours covers up a good day in field.
- a lot of farms are away from electricity sources to charge and sometimes internet connection is non-existent. It is risky to leave a 50k machine on its own to do its job. And what to do if battery runs out on the field?
- how long does it take to recharge? A lot of farmers will not have fast charges on their farm.
In the US? Not true. The vast majority of US farms have power for one simple reason, they irrigate. It'd be far too expensive to irrigate using a gas pump.
The exception MIGHT be dry farms, but those aren't as common as you might think. Further, most farms have shops for repairs which almost always have power for lights (and heat sometimes).
> And what to do if battery runs out on the field?
Simple, grab a gas generator, run to the tractor, and charge it up enough to hobble it to the shop and to a full charge. You might waste an hour running your generator, but that's really not that big of a deal. Many farmers already have those generators (welding is a big reason why).
A particularly ecologically focused farmer might buy some solar panels to do the same thing :).
> how long does it take to recharge? A lot of farmers will not have fast charges on their farm.
Doesn't really matter, it can charge overnight slowly. So long as the farm has access to 240V they likely can get it charge up in the 14 hours of downtime.
At $50k, this is a particularly cheap tractor as well. I'd suspect that farmers would buy 2 and completely sidestep the charging problem if they wanted to run for more than 10 hours.
I just looked on Google Earth and measured it out; we're only about 1.1 miles from a 3-phase line, so it would be feasible, but likely pretty expensive, to get that run to us.
It's actually quite common for farms to have 3 phase power at the least. Modern farming is heavily industrialized. There's all sorts of dryers or blowers or other processing equipment to be run depending on the crop or livestock. Renewables, either self owned or leased land access are a big growth thing too. This means you can be in the boonies of western Kansas and yet be proximate to truly staggering amounts of intermittent generation.
> and sometimes internet connection is non-existent.
It's not great service, but sat internet is pervasive (and yes before the mob shows up starlink is likely to vastly improve this). The main thing this needs is connectivity between the unit and farmer, which is just local wireless.
> It is risky to leave a 50k machine on its own to do its job.
The price isn't a factor in any way I can think of. Any farm bigger than trivial will have several 100 thousand dollars if not millions worth of machinery parked out in the open, and tractor automation has been a big deal for a while now including examples of self driving for simple tasks.
> And what to do if battery runs out on the field?
Probably use the farm truck to haul the portable generator up to it to charge enough to get er back to the barn. Or call the neighbor and ask for a tow. Traditional tractors get stuck all the time. On the scale of problems farmers solve routinely this is very easy.
I think it's probably easy for the audience here to misunderstand what modern farming is like due to unfamiliarity. Farming is high tech now, and farmers are amazing problem solvers. But even historically that was true. Your idealized turn of the century farmer in the US knew how to operate and fix steam engines, pumps, do basic metalwork among many other things. Modern farmers are often skilled builders and fabricators as well.
I grew up on a farm so it was kind of funny reading "A lot of farms don't have access to electricity"
It's weird to read something like that. Every farm in my farming hometown had power nearby. Heck, you'll see power lines all across Idaho primarily for farmers running pumps. You simply don't get more rural than Idaho.
To put things into perspective, this house has power.
https://goo.gl/maps/x6ZiGMhxbKxfHJSj7
Make sure you zoom out to get some perspective on how remote that little house is.
I'd put a lot of blame on movies or tv ads, that make farming look like gardening but bigger. It sure ain't lol.
Starlink might offer a bit of disruption there, particularly once its approved for mobile usage. They might ultimately have an opportunity to offer plans/terminals specifically for situations like this too, dedicated application devices that need small amounts of bandwidth in isolated areas.