If driverless tractors can be made lighter in weight, they could also help in reducing how much the heavy machines cause soil compaction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_compaction_(agriculture)#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_compaction_(agriculture)#...
Of course different soils are different. You need to discuss the particulars of an individual field before you can make a judgement on what is best. But overall bigger is better.
You can gain some traction by going from tires to tracks, as some modern tractors do, but you still need a certain amount of weight or you're just going to spin when you're trying to pull a 30-foot-wide chisel plow through soil and last year's stalks.
Going fully autonomous might make tractors a little cheaper, if they don't need A/C and mirrors and things like that, but not lighter. And they'd still need the human stuff for occasions when it can't drive itself anyway, like moving it around the barn lot or going down the road to the next field.
Optimizing for time matters when paying people is involved but machine costs don't matter so much per hour.
Machine costs do matter by hour. Tractors and harvesters are extremely expensive and there is only a limited time window to get the work done. Going slower means that farmers would have to buy more machines.
The trade-off for making the tractor larger is that you can pull wider and multiple or multi-function implements to do the entire thing faster in one pass.
The larger contact patch for having an absurd number of wheels reduces soil compaction and reduces the chance you get stuck; working in fewer passes further reduces soil compaction and prevents you from getting stuck (since in the ideal case, you're doing one pass on solid ground, and never driving over tilled soil).
I suspect tanks get stuck often in part because that is fun and in part because they need to train troops how to get them unstuck and so they intentionally send tanks into mud - which is to say in a real war the generals might (should) avoid getting stuck, but in training it is important to get stuck often. I'm not a military expert though, but that is my opinion on tanks.
Removing a cab and a human removes at minimum 300-500 lbs (when you account for human weight, all the framing, window glass, HVAC components, seats, screens, etc etc) which is balanced somewhat evenly across both axles.
That means you can take that weight, and use only a portion of it to balance the tractor. Less weight overall.
First of all more weight is good! Weight means more traction, and traction is important. Depending on the system traction or horsepower may be the real limit, but the other is still close.
Second while balance can matter typically doesn't. Even when balance matters, you still need weight on the other axles. Most of the time your are towing something with most of the weight not on the tractor so you just want more weight and you want it more or less evenly balanced - about what a cab gives you.
Come to think of it, this might also benefit small landholders eventually by reducing the minimum amount of land required to fund a single tractor.
Most small landholders should sell and move to the city. You need a fair amount of size to make a decent living selling something cheap. Though my biggest worry is the medium sized farmers - wasting $10/acre in extra chemicals when you have 600 acres is only $6000 - you probably won't even notice it and in any case not wasting it costs investment too. When you have 6000 acres though that $10 is a larger number and you can afford to put a lot of money in better whatever to not waste it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44889842
> if you search me you will see elsewhere that I explained that bigger is better for the soil.
I read through your argument here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44889514
These claims are interesting but I did not find information to substantiate them with a brief search. I did find this:
https://mupages.marshall.edu/sites/nexus/2025/01/17/types-of...
> Most small landholders should sell and move to the city.
Economically, this has been true for decades irrespective of developments in autonomous vehicles. But city life is miserable, and there will always be people trying to escape it on the farm.