We need an open source tractor. Who’s with me!
It doesn’t even have to be great. Just minimum viable product and let iterations improve it.
Maybe a billionaire would fund kicking this off?
It doesn’t even have to be great. Just minimum viable product and let iterations improve it.
Maybe a billionaire would fund kicking this off?
I can see everything on my Mom and Dad’s old Massey Ferguson tractors and every single part is available online from a plethora of vendors since there really aren’t that many parts.
Maybe some of the low-end Mahindra models will do. No fancy electronics, ease to maintain, etc.
The Belarus (MTZ) tractor factory [0] still produces a popular super maintainable model that hasn't changed much since the 1970's.
Potentially, but there are a number of issues to overcome, such as:
More weight on each wheel compresses the soil more. This is possibly alleviated by the 3rd wheel not being in line with the other two, or that might make the problem worse, I'm not sure.
Steering, handling, tipping. With a triangular wheel base, the tractor will seem more top heavy for any given size. This is less of a problem than it would be for eg. an SUV, but it is still a problem. Widening the footprint overcomes this but introduces transportation and parking problems, not to mention having to reconsider spacing of row crops etc. Overcoming that is possible by making the whole thing an articulated tripod that can adjust the wheelbase at need (and incidentally maneuver in any direction), but the flexibility gained comes at the cost of quite a bit more complexity that is unlikely to be worth it for farming equipment (construction equipment might be a different matter, but I wouldn't bet on it).