Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
wheelfront.com
wheelfront.com
And there was no fancy technology in it at all. If I was in the forest and had forgotten the key, I'd just reach behind the dashboard and hot-wire it. The air filter was basically a shisha-pipe that bubbled the incoming air through wire wool and engine oil.
Its fuel gauge didn't work either. You just had to take a look in the tank, or quickly react as soon as the revs started dropping. I ran it dry a few times and had to sit there with a spanner in one hand and YouTube into the other, while trying to bleed all the fuel lines. But they were all on the outside of the vehicle, which made it comparatively easy I imagine.
I've never actually driven a modern tractor, so don't know how it compares. I imagine the clutch is easier on the knees these days!
Anyway, this just felt like the place to share this.
Do you still have the Massy?
It came in handy living in the country, when occasionally someone would get bogged down on a dirt road, and this thing would come to the rescue.
Then again I don't buy much new other than seed. Everything feels like a ripoff nowadays.
It's amazing we can use huge machinery with internal combustion engines and declare it "no fancy technology"
Although modern electronics take this further, with both operation and construction being utterly complex.
About 3 years ago a large branch (about 8" diameter) from an old overhanging tree fell right on the transparent sunroof cover and shattered it into a million pieces. After picking them out of the sunroof mechanism (which no longer worked after the impact) and the inside of the car, I covered the opening with several sheets of magnetized vinyl. Works great, never a drop of water inside since then and it's stayed in place without any attention. Temperature control inside the car at rest or while driving at highway speed is like it was before the damage.
Being old now I never go anywhere since I can get stuff delivered. About every 3 weeks I go out and the car starts right up, I drive a 5-mile loop to circulate the oil and then park it for another 3 weeks. Been doing this for years. I do get an oil change annually.
Now, electronics problems, albeit relativelly rare, were far more common and fucking expensive.
And then, but this more due to the state of modern roads and streets than the car themselves, suspension issues.
Wood furniture joined with glue and pegs rather than inserts and screws. Solid wood furniture at all. Leather and natural fibers gave way to plastics. Ornate castings gave way to simple stampings and simply castings (where things are still cast).
Try doing the same on the ECU in your car. I'll wait.
Neither of those machines had a transistor in them. It was all basic electricity.
Sure you wouldn't like a qualifier on that? I've definitely met some HS graduates that would not be able to do this.
See other story on front page right now: educational scores are trending down and that trend is only going to accelerate now that every student is using LLMs.
What is a shisha-pipe?
They're phenomenal little machines that can do 99% of what you need. It blows my mind that for years, Grandpa farmed with a little Ford smaller than the 175. I can't imagine planting with that thing. The ww2 generation really were tough as nails.
I never felt in control of that old beast
When I started out, 13ish or so, I had to stand on the clutch to get it down.
If you gave it enough beans and dropped the clutch it'll pop a wheelie! (Don't tell my grandpa)
I'd teach someone to drive it and say, "now push down on the clutch". They they would heave and struggle, then eventually succeed and look victorious. I'd say, "well done, it is now half way down! But that's all you need for now!"
EDIT: To fully explain: It has a two-stage clutch. You half-press it and it disconnects the wheels from the engine. If you fully depress it all the way to the floor, it additionally disconnects the power-take-off shaft (PTO) from the engine. The PTO shaft is a spindle on the back of the tractor which drives things like your flail mower, wood chipper, etc.
EDIT 2: Edit 1 was for the general audience, not the parent commenter ;-)
... and kills/maims anyone with lose clothing trying to step over it!
I mowed using a Farmall H on a family farm when I was about 12 y/o. I don't remember ever having deadly serious conversations with family members up to that point in my life. All four grandparents, aunts and uncles-- it seemed like everybody-- sat me down, looked me dead in the eye, and told me sternly and bluntly "you turn off the PTO and see the shaft isn't turning before you get off the tractor. Every. Time."
All of them knew somebody who lost an arm or leg or got killed when they got pulled into a PTO.
That was probably the first time I'd ever been given the opportunity to operate a machine that would fucking kill me if I shirked on respecting it. I will never forget the tone of that communication.
Rural kids are put into situations where they are expected to rely fully on themselves, with life-or-death consequences, from a young age. When your pre-teen is driving a machine on their own that could easily kill them or those around them, giving them a .22 rifle is just... normal. It's not at all the same situation as a kid the same age who lives in an apartment and who may have never been in a place where no one would be close enough to hear them if they screamed for help.
I can't wrap my head around the idea that a large number of people who live in cities seem to want to extend childhood through age 25. My daughters are 12 and 17, and between them have over fifty animals directly depending on them for survival. It's just... foreign.
Wish I could move; I could sell this overpriced place and almost retire.... not under my control
Why, if I may ask?
come to the city, farm boy, and we'll give you a corner you can sling the brown from and we see how you do. we find something fo yo daughters to do too*
*i have absolutely no street smarts, country or city, but I do watch Law & Order and know how to pound a nail and know what to grease the maitre d' to get into the hottest restaurants in town. and beyond that i got friends, some of these guys know people who know people, just sayin
Urban dangers are other person.
A kid gets hurt hiking, "They were unlucky."
A kid on a scooter gets hit by a car, "Why weren't the parents watching?"
Rural values independence, Urban collectivism.
In the Urban situation you can emphasize with both kid and driver.
I lived on a farm for a year as a young kid (farmer rented a couple of trailers on his land). I remember one day I was hanging around the hog pen watching the giant hogs mill about, probably contemplating trying to pet one. Mr Austin came by and sternly told me to not to reach through the fencing, then knelt down and showed me his ear, which was missing a big chunk.
Rural folks might learn to respect a PTO or the varmint rifle by age 10, but city kids learn how to navigate the bus routes and subway. They learn how to walk on crowded streets, how to live among a lot of different people, including dangerous people(and how to avoid the conflict).
It's all quite interesting. Different kinds of toughness, different kinds of mental fortitude.
The first learn that nature is always present and doing its best to kill you / wreck your harvest, and that it is only through man's intelligence and social bonds that we thrive. I would argue a corollary of this is that one cannot tolerate malicious or grossly neglectful people around.
The second group learns that other people are a liability and that bad actors are just a fact of life to be tolerated and worked around.
Both approaches are clearly optimal for their respective environment. The former seems like a stronger foundation for building a civilization on, though.
Your civilisation is being destroyed because a largely rural constituency is able to clean a rifle in 60s but appears to have no critical thinking skills when it comes to a certain New Yorker.
Yes it’s good to learn how to be resilient in nature, but it’s also important to learn how to get along with and manage relationships with larger groups who are not always to be trusted.
The point missing from this discussion is that because of hysteria over stranger danger (not supported out by any real evaluation of or changes in risk) and because we allow cars to dominate our urban spaces, city kids are being denied opportunities for independence they previously had. That’s the real change that’s happened … and we’re replacing real urban experience with corporate attention economies.
It's really mainly in the suburbs where neighborhoods are choked off by bike unfriendly freeways and no for-hire transit.
> The second group learns that other people are a liability
Sounds like nature is simply survival + entropy and sometimes that leads to mixed incentives. Rural folks also understand people are dangerous. Per capita violent crime and murder is higher in Rural areas.
That's why I find it interesting, they're different expressions of common survival needs.
> a large number of people who live in cities seem to want to extend childhood through age 25
This is not great, and a more complicated problem of percieved danger.
Right now all 'city' offers is a shittier deal and pray they do not alter it worse. Obviously that's not politically viable way to get agreement and part of the reason why gun control advocates think "nothing changes."
When the 'country' finally got sick of it then you wound up with state pre-emption against local control being passed in most states because it turned out that bargain was a fraud.
So what I would propose, is if 'city' really wants to loosen up the gridlock, they should bring something serious to the negotiating table. Like ending the GCA and NFA in 'country' and in exchange state pre-emption gets nixed so 'city' can pass tighter laws there.
So to answer your question:
> Cant you all just pass some laws that apply to your place only? Why does it have to be a trade.
Here is where we are at. State pre-emption stops 'city' from passing stronger local control. And federal law stops 'country' from passing weaker local control. To break that gridlock 'city' and 'country' have to have something on the offering table for each other. That is why it has to be a trade.
America's biggest obstacle to meaningful gun control is the groups and people pushing gun control the hardest have no idea what they are legislating. That's how we got nonsense bans on stuff like slings and bayonets, or trying to specifically ban AR-15s while functionally identical guns would remain legal.
And the second obstacle, which isn't far behind, is nobody trusts the US government enough to want to disarm themselves. We already got a police state and the largest military in the world and absolutely zero reasons in living memory to trust the government to look after its people instead of abusing them.
And frankly, I think any gun control measure in America is completely worthless and will only do more harm than good if the majority of gun owners don't trust the government enough to protect them all the time and aren't willingly turning in their guns. US citizens have enough guns to arm the entirety of themselves 100x times over so even if you could seize 95% of guns with magic, that's still enough blackmarket guns for 100+ years of insurgency with zero additional production. Personally I think we would do better to focus more on improving the lives of average citizens so they don't want to blast people randomly.
Take your .22 rifle. Many truly rural families would feel that this tool was essential. Same for having knife on you. We have lived where there are rattlesnake and coyotes as an almost every day thing. Not so much rattlesnakes but certainly coyotes. In fact bear and cougar were not out of the question. The idea that I would allow my kids to wander on the property without a .22 in their 4 wheeler seemed risky. They were expected to know how to shoot just as they were expected to know how to ride a horse, and drive a tractor unsupervised. We taught them to be safe and could not have run our ranch without our girls taking on some big dangerous responsibilities.
We have also lived in big cities where the idea that many of the liberties we enjoyed in the country were insane in the city. The idea that any random teen should be allowed to drive a 80hp tractor around or carry a gun or a fixed blade knife was insanity. Just as allowing my kids to run down the sidewalk or play unsupervised in the park after dark was insanity. On our fist day after moving my eldest daughter ran down the sidewalk and was hit (but not injured) by a car coming out of a driveway.
She just had no clue about how cars in a dense city moved. There just are different life rules that apply in different situations. Guns can be critically important in one environment and absolutely insane in a second. Same goes for driving a tractor that could kill you or a family member or going to a park after dark.
Unless people understand that a different environment might require a different set of norms or even laws we can't have a productive urban/rural conversation. Of course I can drive my ATV along your fence line. You probably can't even see it from your home or hear it. Though you can bet my dad asked your dad for permission 40 years ago. Try running your unregistered, unlicensed ATV through your suburban neighbor's yard and you will find out why there are important laws preventing you from doing what was perfectly fine in the back country.
An exposed, spinning shaft seems benign but once it wraps you or your clothing around the shaft it pulls you in and destroys you in a flash.
I have certainly driven cars with lighter and heavier clutches (I live in EU, automatics weren't popular until recently and are still far from ubiquitous) but I couldn't tell you why every model just doesn't get a light clutch for comfort. A diesel Subaru I drove had a particularly heavy clutch as I recall, so at stop lights I would pop into neutral instead of holding the clutch down for an extended period.
Modern machines may use complex mechanical linkages to make the clutch easy to pull apart but still maintain a firm contact, but that also means higher cost and fragility. Or they use pneumatics or hydraulics to assist, sorta like power steering.
Since then I always pop into neutral when standing at a traffic light. It is interesting how many people in manual driving cultures think there would be no wear and tear if they press the pedal down completely.
Of course there is, as there has to be a force translating connection between rotating parts and parts of the release mechanism which cannot rotate. Only when the pedal is left alone, the release bearing disconnects from the rotating clutch.
I believe wet clutches are semi-designed with this use-case in mind
Good that at least there wasn't much gear changing, pick one for task and just use it
There are so many useful videos on this stuff, but unfortunately the majority of the population still seems reluctant to learn.
Never underestimate a young person and their phone. They not only use youtube or chatgpt to solve daily problems, but date, pay bills, and communicate with their friends using mostly videos/photos/emojis (and occasionally english).
I have no plans to own a tractor but for some reason many others and I enjoy videos like this one:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVvO1tKKjRQ
* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrCvcRxFfyzt3vJmctRaN...
etc. Also hydropower from old washing machine parts and other associated stuff you do on the land videos.
In fact when you open the interior plastic piece the whole thing springs apart and everything from the clicking mechanism to the electrical terminals explode in different directions.
Thankfully, someone had uploaded a video of a very similar switch and, after a few cross words (man I hate assembling mechanisms with springs), I had a new overhand knot in the string and all of the contacts, springs and terminals back in place.
I would, without doubt, drive down to a shop and buy a new one next time...
I actually had one of these connectors break on a bathroom light and just 3D printed a new one. But it should be fairly trivial to add one of these to any light pull you already have.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5140505 (not my design)
Now things have wrapped back around, and nobody would want that, they want less tech and to use their phone, lol.
An awesome memory. Lovely things, these.
I also love driving it, apart from the fact the hydraulics are somewhat off, so the front/rear lift won't ever stay in position.
And it still works.
Things were made different back then.
I looked up the manual, you got everything you need to repair it. Maintenance is extremely easy. Even have electric schema.
Now my BMW, I looked into the manual how to change a light. It said to go to the dealer lol.
Fuck the modern car / tractor / tools. I blame the people for that, we went from customer that demanded to be able to repair their stuff to people who are now mechanically illiterate. I'm not sure they would even know how to replace a tire on their Tesla :)
That's why manufacturer have all the latitude to do what they do. And that's why it didn't go very far with farmers.
It's amazing we let it slip this far. Even cars from a decade or so ago feel much more repairable. I bought an EV and I haven't even seen the motor yet, because I'm going to have to dismantle a bunch of plastic-clipped stuff to remove the frunk, and I've broken enough brittle tabs for one lifetime. God forbid they'd just use actual metal fasteners for this stuff.
It's even worst tho, one day I layed a little bit against the front of the car and it made a reverse bump in the bodywork right on my ass.
Got a 2000 Suzuki that is full metal.
I think the trend of plastic went around 2000 to 2010 because of regulation on crash, plastic absorbs better the kinetic energy so we don't get our head smashed.
But yeah, no excuse to not make it easy to dismantle. It's the equivalent of Volkswagen using all kind of different screws to hold the plastic protection under the car, so that the average Joe who has standards screw drivers can't bleed his oil himself or change the gasoline filter.
This is maddening but you don't know it when you buy the car. It's only later.
https://dailyyonder.com/census-report-unusually-informative-...
Go back to 1910, and more than 50% of the population lived in rural areas. And rural doesn't mean "suburbs". As this trend continues further back in time, I'd expect that people in their 30s may be living in cities in 1910, but we often not born there. They migrated from rural areas to the city.
Which means that city people even into the 50s had a very, very rural background.
So people who grew up on farms miles from any town or neighbours or stores, who had to rely upon themselves entirely, were the ones buying machines. But if you look at today, many people are apartment dwellers, or live in townhomes. They don't even have a place to fix something, let alone the tools or background.
I could fix any small engine before I was 10, work on cars before I could drive, and it's because you just picked up this stuff in a rural area. I guess my point is, if you don't know how to fix anything, and no one around you does except for specialists?
Then you probably won't care about owner repairability as much.
Sad, but probably a likely reason why we're where we are.
Yeah, that's kind of sad.
I bet that one day kid won't even know what a petrol engine car is, won't know how to drive and will basically just use self driving taxi.
Hopefully I'd be dead before that lol.
Great memories.
But the tractor does.
Once, it broke down, and I was astonished to see that there are forums dedicated to this tractor. If I remember correctly, it was a problem with the fuel line that is rather common, and we managed to fix it thanks to these communities.
As I was researching it, I read stories of MF135s found abandoned in a ditch and starting immediately again. A robustness that makes this and other models popular in Africa...
During certain kinds of driving gear shifts became.. tricky. That's when I learned how to double-clutch, something I kept doing on cars as well, for many years after (think going steep uphill on snow and then having to shift into first gear without stopping)
There is a tradition in several European countries named Affouage: If you live in a rural area, you can get very cheap (or even free) wood at the condition that you go to cut it yourself in the close-by forest.
Many many people who are doing this practice are still using today Massy Fergusson 135, Renault R98/461, Ford 3000-4000 series, SOMECA or similar low tech tractors.
The reason are simple: They are cheap to operate, cheap to repair (damages happen easily forest environment) and their small size is perfect for the task.
The demand for these things will never die. Rugged environment requires cheap and robust hardware.
If this startup can capitalize on that, they do have a market.
$100K-$200 is very expensive for many. better find used old one
It is true. But the stock of old repairable tractor will soon or later run dry.
The price of some of these are currently increasing on the secondary market.
If you told me 20y ago, that the old rusty tractor in the neighbour Grand'Pa's storage would be an appreciating asset, I would have laugh.
Then some other country will come up with the alternative. It is insane that piece of very old and simple tech has such a price tag. There are whole bunch of countries that have cheap enough metal to come up with the alternative
YMMV of course, but worth checking into if you have the mechanical and welding skills.
I read this and immediately thought "lunar colony". And especially if that colony wants to make more of their equipment themselves.
At the moment my little brother and my father, who are living in a rural area, have started a collection of vintage tractors by buying everything they can and fixing it up, help that my dad's a mechanic. I'm frankly jealous.
The reason I know that is not that I'm a farmer. It's that 20 years ago a bunch of friends and I wrote and performed a parody song of Gainsbourg/Bardot song "Harley Davidson" where the motorbike brand was replaced with the tractor one.
"Je n'ai besoin de personne en Harley Davidson"
became
"Je n'ai besoin de personne en Massey Ferguson".
The old church had a mural of Icelandic Jesus wearing a fisherman’s sweater.
I’m in the market for a tractor in roughly that size, and am very tempted to just find an old machine in decent shape. I’d be very curious about the decision/experience if you did upgrade to something more modern?
Really the only reason we got a new tractor was for the cabin with AC. That does make it a lot easier to spend an entire day working field. Otherwise you have to deal with whatever weather it is outdoors which can be unpleasant if it's very cold or very hot.
You also get a radio to listen to, which is nice.
We have an even older one from the 1940s that also still fires up and works just fine.
The main thing the modern tractor buys at this point is simply a cabin with AC (which, TBH, is a VERY nice feature). Otherwise there's not much reason not to use the older farm equipment even today.
We'll still use the old massy for tilling and seeding.
My dad and a cousin drove the big tractors. Can't remember whether MF55 or MF65, possibly one of each. Thundering monsters being driven flat out, double-clutched gear changes and all. The reason for all the rush is that the weather isn't that reliable in south Germany, and when they hay is dry and ready, it's all hands on deck.
Anyway... years later I visited the old homestead and there they still were, those big... umm. On Youtube you can probably still find a video of one being turned into a riding lawnmower, underslung mowing deck and all. Those tractors belong in the "Old MacDonald had a farm" era. The modern world is different with the base model of those tractors in the article having three times the power of those old ones, and it goes up from there.
Some of them have a removable roof but that's about it.
In the late 40s, a lot of them were built from tanks !
However, the tech exists for a reason and is not inherently bad, the issue is the lock-in, the lack of choice and interoperability.
IMO, there is plenty of space for an OEM who can play nice with others, offer an open (and vibrant ecosystem), and keep users coming back by choice, not by lock-in.
If a tractor with a clean-burning, efficient $7500k engine could be purchased and were designed around the theory that, in 20 years or so, the owner could reasonably quickly replace the entire engine (with a first-party or aftermarket solution), would that be a good solution?
The common tech that has solved these problems nicely (IMO) is network transceivers: SFP and similar modules are built according to multi-source agreements. They contain all kinds of exotic tech, and they are not intended to be serviced at all, but (unless your switch or NIC has an utterly stupid lockout) you can pull it out and replace it with an equivalent part from a different vendor in seconds, and those parts can be unbelievably inexpensive considering what’s in them. (Single-mode bidirectional 1Gbps transceivers are $11 or less, retail, in qty 2. This is INSANE compared the the first time I lit up a 1Gbps SMF link. To be fair, this particular tech may require one to replace both ends if one fails, but if you can spare a second fiber, the fully IEEE-spec-compliant interoperable ones are even less expensive.)
However one major sticking point is that (often.. maybe always?) the engine block casting is actually a structural component of the tractor "frame". Unlike e.g. a truck that has its driveline mounted between frame rails, a tractor's "frame" is its driveline . So this might add quite a bit of complexity and cost.
With a $20 CAN transceiver, documentation and/or config files from the manufacturer, and a bit of Python or something, you could absolutely bench test those electronic injectors. You might even be able to pick your injection events and adjust the metering, supporting the equipment as it ages. I'd love to see Ursa Ag put in a Megasquirt engine controller [1] or Proteus [2] or similar. You can run TunerStudio on a Raspberry Pi and show it on a touchscreen on the dash.
It's possible to build user-friendly, inexpensive and open engine and vehicle controls. You don't need to have zero electronics to not have locked-down proprietary electronics, you just need to build the electronics in the right way.
[1] https://diyautotune.com/products/ms3357-c?_pos=2&_fid=69f494...
EDIT: I did have some nozzles bored out a little bit once by a shop with EDM equipment. Terrible results, not worth it.
There's lots of other electronics in most modern vehicles, but the public manufacturer rationales for electronic lockdowns almost always point back to emissions concerns because they're so defensible. How do you separate them?
Mandate common interfaces and open hardware. I shouldn't have to buy a $10k dongle to sniff codes. I certainly shouldn't have to buy a different one for each manufacturer.
I would have expected policy to be pragmatic here, with (relatively) relaxed emissions requirements, since an affordable and reliable food supply is in the national interest? Sounds like that's not the case
Two stroke engines are pretty terrible in terms of unburned hydrocarbons and are disgusting for local air quality, which is why I'm glad they're being phased out in many areas.
I'd expect these tractors with I6 diesel engines to run pretty efficiently. I'd bet that the CO2 emissions from tractors are tiny in comparison from the emissions from trucks, fertiliser, and transporting the food.
I would still guess that lawnmowers produce more emissions overall, given that there are so many more mowers than tractors. But they get used less often than tractors, so who knows? Either way, I agree with your thinking process, that the most economical way to reduce overall emissions is to focus on what are actually producing the bulk of emissions.
I don't know how much better cars and trucks can get, and for mowers maybe electric is the answer. Mine is gas-powered, and I know it runs rich. I would love to come inside after mowing and not smell like fuel, so I'm in favor of better emissions controls on mowers.
The future for tools is electric 100%.
they may have a place in the distant future but in 2026, aint no way.
I haven't used one, but I saw a youtube review from Project Farm. You can check it yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6FM_08066I
The DeWalt chainsaw was similar or better than Stihl, in a different series of tests, including cutting trough 10 inch logs.
There were other brands which would stall or be worse, so it depends on the brand.
Sometimes. Above 26HP tractors do have to have emissions controls like diesel particulate filters now. Below that they don't.
They're still pushing the boundary today. The Ring Superbowl ad where they announced they're watching you (but they said "your dog") 24/7 apparently got a lot of people to quit Ring, and you know they're crunching the numbers to see if the retention rate is worth the extra surveillance collection.
IF we wanted to do it properly, I'd imagine we'd have zero mandatory locks on ECU, just a little closed down black box with sensor installed in relatively tamper-proof way (of course there will always be one, the target is for 90% of people to not bother), logging away and maybe sending check engine light if it detects wrong AFR for too long.
Then you just check that on yearly MOT + any signs of tampering. Then owner is free to tune the engine as they want, provided the exhaust is still within the norms for most of the time.
There's no particular reason why a mechanical device needs computers for emissions, as the emissions removing components can still be attached and managed via simpler means. All emissions removing components are effectively physical devices, whether you are talking about carbon filters or PCV valves or particulate filters or the urea fluids that are added to the fuel. None of them requires complex software in order to function. There is no reason why you need to buy an official John Deere branded emissions component that is software locked to tractor and costs 10x the price of third party components that do the same thing.
Also, there is a large room to maneuver between "I want a sensor with some circuitry in it" and "the entire tractor is a proprietary computer with locked down parts". The right to repair movement is not about removing tech, but removing unnecessary proprietary tech that is designed to prevent owners of devices from repairing those devices themselves or with third party components.
Not sure how much appetite there is for that but half price + 5 grand in off the shelf electronics seems like something margin sensitive farmers would do.
Always better short and long term to bring and maintain your own smarts.
This needs to be solved at government level with right to repair laws and requirement for open standards instead of believing in magic of "free market".
Yeah, we're talking about the same thing.... the word for a rich person who exchanges their cash for non-cash assets is "investor"
Have we learned nothing from what happened to the US's industrial economy.
If you turn the farm into an obviously poor investment it'll go tits up because neither wall street nor main street is dumb enough to invest money into a losing proposition.
However, financiers played an indisputable role in the current state of economic wealth in today's world.
Good talk.
'Global slavery index' is not a credible source, even according to Wikipedia.
I'm sorry I spent 2 minutes of my life looking it up - I should've known better.
This conversation is over. I can't trust you to not throw random crap a google search produces that supports your fantasy that I then have to spend brain cells to debunk.
I suspect you didn't use one at all, because I am not aware of any measure of "slavery" that correlates positively with any measure of investment activity.
Labor practices and protections are much better in countries with high economic investment.
Buuuuut, the cost of implementing that stuff hurts the competition way more, so Deere and friends don't really fight it.
They're trading absolute market size for stronger control over market share. Less people are going to buy their products at the margin if the products are made worse. But those that do will buy it from them, so more profit.
a) be hurt
b) win
Consider whether this is a binary or a multiple choice question (and even whether any choices need be made).
Any argument made without acknowledging this is purely in bad faith. The problem is not regulation that benefits OEMs. The problem is that you can simply purchase regulations that benefit you.
You are certainly aware that we , in Canada, have expertise in software that is quite a bit more advanced than tractor software.
It also has a massive agricultural sector. You know how Canada is known as an oil and gas powerhouse? Agriculture is more than double the size of o+g in Canada.
I think the most well educated country on earth, with a massive, highly automated, agricultural sector might be able to reason about tractor software.
Farmers are just pissed they lose the ability to repair the vehicle easily or get stuck with monthly subscription because tractor company has changed the terms and you are praying they don't change it further.
It looks like magic because it works like magic. Surprisingly it is also possible to believe in the magic of "government intervention" though it looks less like magic and more like unintended consequences.
These low-tech tractors could become a hot bed for open source experimentation. Nothing stopping someone from sticking a tablet on the dash. You could run GPS harvesting optimization software or some webthing locally. Could be cloud or clever DiY farmers could run their farm off a local instance on a small machine using a WiFi AP atop the barn or whatever.
But there's more to agtech than driving a tractor around, a lot of what these big integrated systems do (at the high end) is very data driven -- determining where and how to plant, irrigate, fertilize, etc. There's a lot of integration work beyond just making the tractor drive.
I just don't think you're going to effectively compete with big agtech by putting a bunch of parts in a box, shaking it, and hoping you end up with a beautifully integrated solution. Integration hell is the reason big commercial firms dominate when it comes to large integrated systems.
If you want to see a couple of guys learning how to farm from scratch, visit https://www.youtube.com/@spencerhilbert. Spencer and his brother made a bit of money off games and Youtube and have been starting out on corn, hay, as well as raising beef. It gives a pretty good insight into how pervasive tech is in farming, and how despite that, how much of farming still relies on hard, physical work.
However, I'm not as interested in being a farmer at that level. I'm much more interested in the homesteading aspect of farming. I'm not trying to feed the world as much as me and mine and maybe some extra. So not just farming, but also some ranching with sheep/goats/chickens/pigs. I have friends doing this that I'm keeping an eye on. They had a head start as their kids grew up in FFA and are already familiar with raising live stock, and then having them processed to make that part much less daunting.
> raising beef
Is that cows? English isn't my first language, so I thought beef was the word just for the meat, with all Normans eating while Saxons raising thing.
So a DIY solution is aiming for somewhere in the center of the market -- enough scale that it makes sense to bother, but not enough enough money to avoid the headache of DIY. It might make sense for some mid-sized farms in developing economies, but it seems to be a narrow window to me.
How difficult is this to implement outside of big ag-tech? I feel that a community of experienced farmers and programmers (or programmer-farmers) could tackle this.
The bigger agcorps have tones of integration.
The machine, from tractor to combine and everything in between often feeds data together to produce a holistic understanding.
Things like - How much fuel was used - Where your tractors and sprayers drove - Soil samples and content - How and where every bit of chemical and fertilizer was applied - What weather hit your field - How much and and the moisture content of every bit of the field you harvested
It goes on an on.
Yes, but how useful is the integration?
The sprayers/spreaders can be connected cheap computer to achieve most of what you describe.
I used to do literally that but in aircraft. Must be easier and cheaper in tractors
But if you're observing a fleet of 100+ machines you kinda need some integration and a central location. Which in turn connects to multiple other services like weather, crop markets, fuel prices etc.
A tractor is a big thing to have rolling around unsupervised. I would want a lot of safeguards. Blindly going from one GPS point to another sounds like a nightmare.
Incumbents thrive on the myths about what they do being hard and impossible to replicate.
Yes, it is a lot of work to replace what you can get off the shelf today. But it isn't like the basic tech itself is all that hard to replicate step by step if you accept that it takes time and the first N development stages will give you something that isn't as feature rich and polished. And if one makes it open source, interoperability will be easier to do something about.
Perhaps some of the analysis tools/services you can buy today will be hard to replicate, but I doubt they are that hard to replicate. And it is worth having slightly suboptimal results for a couple of seasons than being on the receiving end of a hostage-situation.
But yes, it is certainly a huge effort to get what you actually need.
For farming, it’s even more tough because the market has a really uneven distribution. Usually the best place to tackle huge incumbents is in the midmarket. They’re big enough to need your automation, but they’re small enough to take a risk to save some money, and the features you haven’t built yet aren’t blockers for them.
But there’s basically no midmarket farming, all farms are pretty much either really big or really small.
Edit: specifically thinking of https://comma.ai/
It went a bit too far, optimum would be modern enough to have drive by wire but with open ECU and documentation
It is no harder than doing it with an ECU, except that you need to install a servo or speed governor with hand tools, instead of fiddling with ECU code.
Both systems can use an open bus protocol. The mechanical system resists proprietary rent seeking as an added bonus.
We’re commenting on an article about farmers willing to pay for tractors with rebuilt all mechanical engines when the exact same tractor could be built with a new computer controlled one. That choice was intentional.
These governors are basically mechanical analog computers which use the inertia of flyweights, springs, and some very clever linkages to do their thing.
And it's a bit easier to make 3rd party addons when you just have some open bus standard, not "mount that servo on a gas pedal"
Also note that maintaining a particular AFR in a diesel is kind of a non goal, at least from the perspective of engine performance. With the older style, simple injection systems that are user serviceable you only get one pulse per cycle. So you can't really change AFR without compromising torque output. For a tractor, when I set the lever all the way forward I (the operator) expect it to maintain revs sufficient to maintain 540rpm at the PTO unless it is not able to do so (fueling maxed out under load). Putting more load necessarily means more fuel in for a given RPM, ergo higher AFR. Note that turbocharging changes this equation a little.
This is an area where you would probably need entire ecosystem of systems that are onboard tractors, but also for the various implements you hook up to it to monitor sowing, fertilizing, spraying etc. Including backend systems that you can either self-host or subscribe to some service that doesn't have awful terms.
It shouldn't take immense amount of capital to make some real progress towards something that can make a difference.
This tractor will last 50 years (and maybe more). Your grandchildren will be able to still use it. That longevity is the primary reason farmers would be super interested in this.
Some jobs (like mucking a barn for example) don't require a high-tech tractor. Sometimes you just need a workhorse that you can trust will start, run and do the job. Every single time. I still see farmers running old minneapolis-moline tractors from 100 years ago!
Not sure they needed to go all the way to mechanical injection tho, this is just literally burning money away
The problem is computers and software enable lock-in, because of their flexibility and communications capability. Get rid of them, and you make lock-in much more difficult (or even impossible if you use "standard" parts).
Also, computers and software are complex, and that complexity is not physically visible. If you want something you can completely understand, it's probably a good choice to simplify by cutting them out completely.
In any case, EFI gives you more control over the engine and vastly simplifies the overall product. I don't know if you've seen the mechanical fuel-injection pumps used by tractor diesels; they are basically tiny engines unto themselves, with their own little block and camshaft [0]. There is an entire world of diesel performance modding with a subset of it dedicated to modifying the Bosh P1700 mechanical fuel-injection pump to change timings, handle higher RPMs, and run higher pressures. I would not call it, or its carburetor cousin in the gasoline world, "simple" compared to computer-controlled fuel delivery.
An open-source ECU project, on the other hand, enabled a hacker to implement Koenigsegg's Freevalve tech on a Miata [1].
[0]: https://blessedperformance.com/ddp-cummins-hot-street-p-pump...
This is so cool, shame that Freevalve never seemed to go anywhere.
So a prerequisite might involve fixing the patent system...
1. This fails, goes away and we're back where we started; or
2. They take the bag and sell to John Deere, who then locks down the tractors in the same way to force you to buy support, official parts and so on. And that'll happen. It's a bait-and-switch so somebody can get rich.
The only solution to this is collective ownership or some other non-profit structure so a handful of owners can't sell out and cash in.
Look to Spain's Mondragon Corporation [1] for inspiration.
[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-mondragon-be...
3. JD buys them, competition works, others notice they can just "build a tractor that's simple", and suddenly there are more competitors to choose from. JD still can't compete, and can't buy them all...or operate on small margins.
---------------
Tractors aren't cars. It isn't merely inconvenient if they are unavailable at crucial times, so ease of repair is critical. Farmers have always done as much of their own maintenance as possible. John Deere has spent a lot of time taking away the reliability and ease of repair that farmers need in order to give them "advanced" features they don't need.
Farmers who want advanced capabilities might now look to build them on top of no-tech tractors with open-source solutions rather than trusting John Deere again. That way, if the "would be nice" tech has problems they can rip it off and get the harvest in without it.
Well, sure. Maintenance is an off-season job. Its that or sit on the couch watching TV, so you may as well be in the shop getting equipment ready. Even if it takes you longer than an experienced tech, does it really matter? Not really. The winters are long.
Repairs are a different story. When things break, you need it fixed now. Wasting a day trying to figure out how to separate complex, seized parts from each other isn't time you have. You're going to be hiring a mechanic who has done it a million times before.
Of course, more important than who does the work is part availability. Having the human capacity to get something fixed means nothing if you cannot also get the parts you need. I've certainly been caught more than once needing to wait a week on a part, which is not a fun place to be. And this is where John Deere has focused their business: Doing more to keep parts available near to where the farmers are, so that you can get parts exactly when you need them. This is, above all else, why John Deere is the market leader.
> Farmers who want advanced capabilities might now look to build them on top of no-tech tractors with open-source solutions
I have been going down this road and am starting to regret it a bit. The saving grace is that I have found enjoyment in building a system of my own. But if I found it to be a chore, at this point I'd have deep remorse that I didn't just pay someone like John Deere for a fully delivered, highly polished solution. I know the HN crowd tends towards the DIY, but, having actual experience here, I don't see this happening outside of the small subset of farmers who find fun in it. It is a decent hobby for those so inclined, but from a purely commercial perspective the time and effort can be better put to use elsewhere.
1. No matter how great of a shade tree mechanic you are, you will never be able to fix it faster than someone who does it every day. They have found all the little tricks and quirks about your machine that your casual maintenance will never uncover.
2. While large farms with full-time mechanics on staff have been known to make deals to warehouse parts in their own shop on consignment, much more realistically for any kind of normal farm you are going to have to drive to the dealership to get the parts you need. Whereas the dealership tech can bring the parts to you. Meaning that you have to travel twice as far, taking twice as long, to get the parts back to your equipment than if you call a mechanic.
The things that are likely to fail under use where there has been proper maintenance tend to be the things that are unpredictable and catastrophic, at very least requiring parts, and most likely requiring advanced knowhow. And at that point, the dealership tech is going to be faster at getting you back up and running, even if you could theoretically pull it off yourself. So, realistically, there isn't much of a compelling case for doing your own repairs when time is of the essence.
Farmers are often willing to accept more downtime to do it themselves out of pride, though. I admittedly often fall victim to that myself, so I get it. But it’s clear that the farmers who are serious about farming as a business aren’t dinking around trying to fix things themselves. It is not economically prudent to do so. Granted, not all farmers farm for business sake. For many it’s more of a hobby or lifestyle and wanting to be a part-time mechanic can play into that.
Sailboats have the similar issue:
When are are in the middle of the pacific and get an egine problem, you want the engine to be low tech enough to be able to fix, or at least patch, yourself with minimum parts.
Yanmar switched its whole lineup of engines to ECU around 2014, but the one without ECU are very much sought after for the above reason.
There are no digital controllers and no consequent promises of higher efficiency or reliability. More than one sailor I've talked to see this absence of electronics as a feature. Sailors are wary of gear that's difficult to understand.
With just a half-decent socket wrench set and a few other common tools, my delicate desk-job hands handle all maintenance tasks and most repairs.
The marketing excuse for the tech might be features or efficiency, but the reason for the tech is lock-in and minimising product lifetime.
The days when manufacturers had friendly, cooperative relationships with their customers are long gone :( Can we bring them back? I hope so, but am not hopeful.
Tech for improvement for customers vs tech for moats/enshittification, especially when imposed by one side on the other.
The latter is never very good.
It's so bad the FTC and states had to sue Deere over just the right to repair. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/...
People are just tired of being mislead and abused by corporations, which is why there is now a market for non-tech products.
Do you need it? No. Is it nice to have? Yes.
The strict "no tech" premise of these tractors feels comparable to someone disabling the cruise control feature on their own car because they read an article about BMW locking heated seats behind a subscription.
I don't know much about tractors, but I would think that surely there are some modern benefits that these Ursa tractors are missing out?
However, the article claims that they're selling really well, so maybe at that price point the tradeoffs are still worth it.
If you want more examples look into IoT products like smart toothbrushes, many of them now are "AI enabled".
But tech in general is perhaps in a growing-up phase, we had Arduinos and Raspberry PI's filling a similar need (computer to electronics being needlessly complicated) that was initially filled from the low-end, but now we have faster SBC's and stuff like Framework laptop's that is expanding the range of options for repariable/replaceable/hackable parts up to the high end today and farming equipment is probably destined to get a similar range of options.
An interesting note here is, will cars also start getting a range of more hackable options, mechanics are ingenious already but it's still very much hacks without manufacturer support, but a new manufacturer providing a low-cost base could very well pop up and grow quickly if they establish an ecosystem.
But technology is expensive. That's the play here: To strip the tech so that the tractor can be sold for a fraction of the cost. And for the farmers who don't need tech, that might be appealing. They will never win over the farmers who are already buying equipment with all the bells and whistles, but there could be an opportunity to capture those who are still in something 50 years old and are looking to update to an affordable newer machine that isn't worn out.
Repairability will be the biggest concern for any potential customer. It helps that they've tried to stay as "off-the-shelf" as possible, but the article suggests they struggle to keep parts already and there is no dealer network to see that the parts are sitting where the farmers are located. John Deere is the market leader mostly because they've worked hard to make sure you can get parts as soon as you need them and not have to wait days/weeks to have it shipped from across the country/world, if they exist at all. The Belarus tractor saga taught farmers the hard lesson of what happens when the machine is cheap to buy but parts are difficult to source long ago.
There is a value in safety regulation but the incentives as legislated have led to negative results. It needs to be fixed or repealed. Not sure there's a clean solution here.
Most Toyotas I've seen have a screen for the backup camera and the carplay/music/gps console, but everything else is still knobs and buttons.
This is true on both my 2013 and 2026 Toyotas.
I tried a 2025 Ford Maverick for a year before I traded it for the Tacoma. All the AC/Heat/Etc controls were on the screen. Couldn't stand it. Put me off of ever considering a new Ford again.
- My vehicle has a backup camera with a screen, but has physical buttons for all controls (A/C, audio system). There's no reason cars can't have both.
Specifically, 10 feet by 20 feet directly behind the vehicle. I'm actually curious how this could be achieved with only mirrors. That's a pretty big swath for anything with a viewpoint where the driver is sitting.
> My vehicle has a backup camera with a screen
Early implementations just used a screen in the rearview mirror. No need for any kind of infotainment screen.
It's there when the truck is in reverse and otherwise just a normal mirror.
Early 2010s actually seems like a sweet spot for a lot of automotive tech - it's decent enough, but "mobile" wasn't really a thing yet, and bandwidth was expensive, so there's no assumption that everything should be an app phoning home yet (iPhone was still brand new).
It's the regulations (or lack thereof) that allow touchscreens in cars as they are that should be the target of ire. Reverse camera regulations or not, the current state of touchscreen car rubbish was inevitable without the existence and enforcement of regulations addressing it.
That's not counting injuries or property damage, but it is still an already low number
[1] https://www.kidsandcars.org/news/backup-camera-mandate-linke...
[2] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2014/04/07/2014-07...
The effect of this is obvious and felt in the end product.
Heated seats and stearing wheel, yes please.
But yep what I want is a Saab 900 "cockpit" car -- everything can be focused on and manipulated (physically!) without my eyes leaving the road or my hand having to explore too much.
But, yeah, electric.
I get there's been plenty of vaporware cars in the past but by all signs Slate is making real progress towards delivering actual vehicles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6_9_HHLOSY
(Not for sale yet though.)
> BRING YOUR OWN TECH
> Bring the apps you know and love to create the experience you want. Instead of a bulky, distracting, and quickly outdated infotainment system, a Slate can come with something simpler: a smartly designed mount that fits a phone or tablet and a holder for a portable Bluetooth speaker. Heating and air conditioning are included, no need to bring your own fan.
> Your Slate will age gracefully, because it’ll always have the latest tech—yours.
These days, the big foreign manufacturers are all in the same game as the domestic ones - software nonsense. Tariffs are keeping other foreign competition out at the moment, so it'd have to be a new domestic manufacturer, or an existing one who deviates from the standard auto playbook.
Cheap, fast enough, practical, goofey looking.
3 out of 5, which I think merely qualifies it as "average"
And with all the distracted drivers looking into their phones while driving, I want more and more cars to get at least emergency breaking systems.
I'm unclear whether you're stating the current state of affairs, or arguing that such safety features cannot exist without this lock in.
If it's the latter, you may have missed the point. GP was clear they want modern safety and powertrain, just without the tracking.
None of the safety features you mention require the manufacturer to harvest and sell personal data — that's a separate choice OEMs have made, not a technical prerequisite.
No issues so far.
So consumers DO want all-touchscreen disposable cars like Tesla - it's similar to how disposable phones had replaced phones with removable batteries(even among IP rated phones). Wallets vote strongly against consumers.
I recently did a lawn tractor conversion from gas to electric and what I got was in my opinion significantly better and more reliable than a commercial option at 20% of the price but it is limited to 4mph. Scaling it to 5 would require a lot of custom fabrication and a much more expensive drive motor. Once this tech is significantly better and cheaper to the point of being a commodity it will be a different story. For now it just isn’t.
Personally I have a 2019 Mazda 3 which has camera vision all around, radar cruise control and heated seats but no lane assist bumping you around or a cellular connection relaying any information.
The only anti feature it has is that stupid idle stop, but that’s easy to permanently disable. It also has car play but doesn’t have a touch screen.
Anyway I’m not saying you should get this car specially but there are cars out there that are like what you want.
Extremely comfortable and especially on long hauls, extremely nice experience to drive (people like to bash bmw owners but its really a premium experience to drive and not just look at, at least this one and previous E46 one certainly are). Of course heated seated, power windows and best implementation of laser hud projection on windshield I ever saw.
Most modern basic/middle class cars feel like half-assed shit compared to it. Cost peanuts these times too.
the current trend in the industry (before ai everything) has been software defined vehicle [1].
while the ux has been horible, the things hidden away from us are also becoming very bloated, and beyond the microcontroller-level complexity.
as a side-effect, even if you build a modern, mass-market car without screens, the ones in the future would still need to be connected to the manufacturer for ota updates for core functionality. expect supply-chain issues like people faced with axios, etc.
I don't want a laptop & to do a brake bleed for every minor tweak or fix, nor do I want to have to charge my bike.
This is also why I still drive a much older car and will hang on to it as long as I possibly can.
I think repairability/right to repair sometimes misses the simplicity aspect. Being able to repair something is great, however its less great if its extraordinarily complicated or you need to hire outside expertise. Keeping the machine as simple as possible so repairs can be done at home, with standard tools, is the real win. Its the difference between replacing a phone battery by sliding off a removable back cover, or needing a special toolkit and a heat gun to remove the screen and melt the adhesive first.
This is basically a contradiction. The last 15 years of efficiency improvements were achieved by adding complexity: turbochargers, automatic start/stop, direct injection, ECU controlled fuel ratios, etc.
> The 12-valve Cummins is arguably the most widely understood diesel engine in North America. Every independent shop, every shade-tree mechanic with a set of wrenches, every farmer who grew up turning bolts has encountered one.
That's great! I'd point out the 12 valve wasn't introduced until the 90s, but that's kind of immaterial -- it's as simple to work on as any other mechanically injected analog diesel is and they were in widespread use for nearly a century before that. One immediately wonders why we moved away from these and towards more complex options, and why this startup has to remanufacture old engines instead of sourcing new engines. The answer among those of us who care about right to repair tends to be "evil corporations want to make proprietary systems that require ongoing fees!" which is true for John Deere, but also, the EPA mandated DEF/DPF systems + limp modes on all farm equipment since 2014, and the new relaxed standards include complicated rules about what percentage into limp mode they go at different intervals during different periods of time after those notoriously unreliable systems start to have errors. You can't do that without modern ECUs!
I'm all for reducing the harm caused by running diesel engines in the most densely populated cities on the planet (DEF and similar systems are about particulate emissions, not carbon), but we're being naive if we pretend that extending these regulations to farm equipment isn't a huge factor in why that same equipment has gotten more expensive and less reliable over the past decade.
This feels like one of those 'burying the lede' situations.
Can you explain what's functionally illegal (and I admit that I'm mildly curious about the distinction of functional illegality and non-functional illegality) about this existing?
I'm as breathless as you are, after reading that second paragraph, but I nonetheless remain ignorant about the nuances of the legality of this situation.
My take on this is you are throwing all the good things away about modern engines. You could easily make a right to repair tractor with low tech but still enjoy modern improvements.
GP explained it right here:
> the EPA mandated DEF/DPF systems + limp modes on all farm equipment since 2014
In terms of legality, it means manufactures need to include all of those systems and their associated complexity, but the way that this startup is getting around it is using engines that were built before those requirements and are thus grandfathered into not needing them.
Also on the legal side, there's a thriving black market of mechanics who are willing to rip all those systems out of diesel engines. It's not uncommon to see double-digit percent increases in both power and fuel economy after it's done. The EPA has prosecuted a few cases against shops and parts suppliers for those "diesel deletes"
Not true at all.
Every diesel engine sold after the early 2010s is not permitted to emit a certain amount of soot particles of certain sizes, and not permitted to emit certain concentrations of certain gases.
Manufacturers don’t have to use a DPF or EGR or DEF to achieve that. They can do it however they want.
Having lived around Africa for three years and in Latin America for two, I’m extremely happy the EPA doesn’t let vehicles belch black smoke into the air.
FWIW I’m a car nut, currently own a diesel with all those systems. Have also owned a 6BT 12 and 24 valve. I do not want to stand, or have my kid stand near the exhaust.
Is that still the case?
It's nice to see this company doing well for itself so quickly, and I hope they deliver on every promise made while reaping immense success. At the very least, it'd send a clear and unambiguous message that the market for simplicity is there and desperate for products that cater to it.
Nice tag line but not a complete picture. The "significant number of farmers" in terms of actual market spend driving the equipment industry is not mom-and-pop outfits but rather agri-industrial complexes with machines to match. What they want is (1) availability and (2) ROI. For (1), that is first and foremost subject to legal stipulations like EPA etc, then secondly subject to production availability. For (2), electronics are the name of the game if you are looking to turn a profit with farming because counting every seed, measuring every drop of chem, and tracking every inch of plotted ground leads to better ROI.
Ursa shows us that there is indeed a market for "simple and reliable" equipment -- but it's not cheap or affordable. There is zero market for "affordable" equipment, because almost nobody does small scale farming anymore
Small farms became economically and socially irrelevant almost a century ago in developed countries. Petroleum based fertilizer and industrial machinery drove the marginal cost of food to zero, and it is now only profitable to farm at very large industrial scale.
The main social outcome there was that starvation and malnutrition became vanishingly rare in these countries.
(In fact, _obesity_ is now, for the first time in human history, a widespread problem for the poorest in these societies.)
Society chose "nobody starving" as a better outcome than preserving romantic small farms for the sake of tradition.
[1] Less than 1% of the US population works in agriculture today (https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12961) as compared to ~30% in the early 20th century.
Video the press are taking stills from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDR6g9iG9Ds
Interview with more details on trade show floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9QxeNyKbB4
1. LOVE this idea as I've always been a big fan of "right to repair" and even at work, FinTech SRE/DevOps, I say things like "we want this to be like a 1975 Ford: you open the hood, look inside, understand it and it's easy to fix. We don't want a 2026 Ferrari."
2. The Econ major/MBA in me wonders how long you can sell cheaper tractors that last forever. I say this b/c it's like trying to sell 100 year lightbulbs: markets are not infinite so if you have everyone buy them in years 1-10, what do you sell after that? The general idea is that you charge MORE for these things since a. "easy to repair" is now an added feature, b. people will buy less of your thing so you need to make more money upfront.
Granted, there is probably some sweet spot and/or "even selling 1,000 == a couple million and that's enough for anyone" but I still like to debate the points
And just because a tractor is low tech and designed to run forever doesn’t mean it won’t still need parts and service. Time comes for us all and that includes your wheel bearings, bushings and seals.
The bulb stuff was a cartel not normal functional markets.
We mistake equilibrium for failure. If you're earning a good living and operating sustainably, there's no reason to continue to extract more and more wealth. We really need to decouple the idea of success away from a requirement of endless YoY growth.
Not every business or product needs to go on for ever. I think there's still plenty of value in a finite project. Ship your product, hit your financial goals, then retire or move on.
Let's say your appliance is so well built that it lasts for generations: Great for the consumer, great for the environment, but not so great for the business that is no longer sustainable under a traditional economy.
Why should we settle for this gaping built-in flaw of traditional economics when better ones could replace them?
Less total sales, but who cares? You build a quality product and everybody is happy.
> A UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) is a robotic vehicle that operates on the ground without a human driver onboard.
as far as auto mation goes, thats how implements used to work. it was a tracter/thresher/combine. then a bale counter is slapped on then maybe row sighting or guidance, etc.
if your really snazzy, the implement is actually mapping the soil for moisture, or rough composistion and holding data to use in reformulating or notating your current cultural plans, i.e. supplemental spot feeding and irrigation.
actual agricultural needs, not just fluff.
Other than ~30min it takes to teach an employee to drive manual it doesn't do anything worse than the modern ones it works alongside and it does a handful of minor things much better by virtue of predating OSHA.
There's nothing to keep you from putting it on two wheels and the transition from on the ground to off the ground is pretty graceful and operator friendly whereas the newer lifts rely on a pressure release valve to keep them from lifting that much and (presumably) because they were always expected to be far from ragged edge their weight distribution is not really proper for that. The counterweight is substantially taller so how hard it pushes down is reduces more quickly as the lift comes up so it lifts tire further (and is more likely to dump the load or go over). This also means the old lift has a way lower ass pucker factor when doing stuff at max height. The real nuisance is when braking though. Yeah you "shouldn't" brake with the load up but operators who get good will raise the load at speed as they are coming in to put a pallet of stuff on top of another pallet of stuff and then when they brake it can get sketchy. The new lifts do corner much better unloaded though so I guess you could be much faster zipping through a warehouse on a new lift (but what workplace would permit that? And top speeds are about the same so there's no benefit in a big outdoor workplace like say an airport or shipyard).
There's no seat switch or other safety interlocks so you aren't putting a ton of wear on it if you're constantly getting out to fiddle with stuff. This also means you can do "unsafe" things like stand beside it and wrangle something and just reach in and make the mast go up and down. While in a textbook world this is "bad" and you "should only pick pallets" and "everything should be strapped to the pallet" in the real world you make all that back and more because it means you can use the forklift as a glorified engine hoist/shop crane without a helper. Hook and chain operations are made much safer/more reliable by this too since the operator can be sure things are good and is not tempted to half ass it to save the time of getting back out. Sure you could always add a helper but that's dangerous too because one person doing stuff near equipment and one person running equipment opens the door to miscommunication related injury that can't really happen among one person.
I'm sure "at scale" the new lift is safer, but safer for who? In what operating context? How big is the difference?
In the meantime, they have to maintain a very high fixed cost base in their factory, distribution network, and skilled unionized workforce. I'm really not even asking about how will they maximize shareholder dividends, I just mean how do you not go bankrupt after you sell your first 10,000 tractors.
This is the whole reason why middle class is dying and power and wealth are being consolidated amongst the rich.
The thing is, your reputation will get out there. Folks will want to work with you because of who you are; it'll be profitable (in many ways) even if it isn't a 100-year dynasty.
These subscription-based and planned-obsolescence fads are experiments that will run their course. In the end, business will thrive where they meet consumer demands, not because their business model was proposed in some boardroom.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the MTZ Belarus 82.3 can be had for the equivalent of $50k.
It's a simple machine for a simpler time, so obviously doesn't meet any emissions regulations. But at least in my region farmers went to great lengths to acquire them - even illegally. By the time the tractors are confiscated, they'll more than pay for themselves.
I thought the whole idea of so much of the tech is to be able to lock you in and make profit that way, through servicing and features and subscriptions and whatever else.
If they're giving up that entire profit stream, they have to make money somewhere else. So how are they selling these for so much less and still making a profit? What am I missing?
But I could be wrong. I can't know but I'm pretty sure the GP was writing tongue in cheek. As in mocking the business strategies that have been eroding the engines of our economy.
The only reason many consumer televisions are as cheap as they are is because they're being subsidized with advertisements.
It's the same thing with the razor and blades model, where the razor is sold at a loss and the profit comes from the replacement blades. Or the game console model, where the console is much cheaper than an equivalently powered PC because the profit is made on the games.
Low upfront purchase prices are subsidized by future income streams which can be enforced with technological locking. If you don't have that, the upfront purchase price generally has to be much higher.
I'm confused about how you can look at all the less (or anti) functional, more expensive, disposable/fragile crap companies are producing and defend it. I've seen so much waste and stupidity in companies, so much unnecessary and artificial complexity, and so much generated information asymmetry. It doesn't add up even if the loss leader and other stories told to excuse and distract from it are powerful.
But it is reality. It's not some story being told to excuse or distract. It's just how certain business models work.
And yes, companies have waste and stupidity because human beings aren't perfect and managing companies is actually really hard. That doesn't change anything about which business models are viable and which ones are not. At the end of the day, your profit has to come from somewhere.
As is shown by the popularity of these alternatives, they are making a worse product at a higher price and augmenting it with abusive business policies to extract even more from farmers while many farms and farmers are failing and dropping like flies.
I suspect an adjacent part of it is anger by the population of farmers that used to actually be Deere's core market that have been fired as customers (without being told) as Deere chases the bigger customers and the economic wisdom of being a customer has disintegrated.
This but for TVs
This but for robot vacuums
This but for security cameras
This but for baby monitors
This but for washing machines
This but for fridges
Anyone else got any requests?
Large car manufactures will lobby to avoid competition of barebones, cheap cars.
Are there directories for similar items? I love the idea of a simple, single purpose device that has maintenance and repair-ability at the forefront.
A friends dad sold his existing business and has been making $$$ in semi-rural texas importing and selling Chinese skid loaders. This market already exists.
I liked that it had the dual speed walk mode. Don't want to be creeping around the yard.
I guess the startup is selling low tech stuff in the 100-200hp range, but you start getting computers and stuff at that point with the conventional manufacturers?
They certainly sell sub 100 hp / $100K tractors that are reliable and low tech, so I’m struggling to see any differentiator except the engine size.
Also, half price is an odd claim. The Kubota M6 looks comparable to the $130K option from the startup, but starts at $100K.
I can’t read the article because cloudflare is blocking iOS now, apparently.
Also, for the small-medium range, a BEV or plugin / serial hybrid powertrain would be a game changer. Lots of low end weight, infinite torque at low speeds, and no hearing protection required to operate it. Also, it wouldn’t get as wicked hot in the summer for the operator, nor would it dump diesel exhaust everywhere.
A low tech version of that would be compelling (similar to slate).
Edit: they could even use standard mounts electrical for the generator and common battery packs, so if either powerplant blew up, it’d be a bolt-in replacement. The actual electric motors probably would never blow out.
The problem isn't the presence of electronics. It's the use of electronics as a proprietary layer to gatekeep physical hardware. When a tractor becomes a "software platform," the farmer loses the ability to perform basic maintenance because of DRM and encrypted ECU handshakes.
We need to treat the electronics as a component of the tool, not the owner of the tool. If the software is the only thing preventing a mechanical machine from functioning, that's not a feature but a defect
These farmers have more balls than most Apple users.
You can do a lot of things if you don't care about the spirit of the law and your negative externalities.
Like, the signals seem pretty clear to me. The spirit of the regulations is that these shouldn't be produced and put into operation anymore. The company is doing it anyway.
The HN crowd would enjoy the Global Village Construction Kit's work on an open-source tractor
https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/
https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/
https://www.opensourceecology.org/microtractor-workshop/
And their other open source machines they deemed "critical for civilization"
Modern diesel systems equipped with DPF tech (which consumes DEF, the fluid) require a regen cycle which is kinda like an oven cleaning itself - they get super hot and burn away particulate before they can be used again. Farmers are more frustrated by the system than the fluid. In fact, DEF is really just piss (urea) which is the same kind of product that they use for fertilizer. Although the prices for urea have skyrocketed recently so perhaps they truly do hate DEF too.
The awesome thing about these 'older' Cummins engines is yes they lack DEF systems and also have mechanical fuel injection. As is commonplace with diesel, there are no spark/glow plugs either. So ostensibly once you have the engine started, it requires zero electricity or computer systems to operate. The RPM of the engine dictates everything else mechanically through gearing. This is a big win for equipment that needs to "just work". Of course they still have sensors and all kinds of systems that are kinda layered on top... but they're not strictly required. This is also why the "runaway diesel" problem exists. You cannot stop an engine like this without starving it of air or fuel.
This is important to know in the context of tractors because in the US, 25-74hp tractors generally need only DPF without SCR (there are basically three bins depending on horsepower level). This makes these midsized tractors a bit of a sweet spot for a lot of tasks; of course, you still have to deal with regen (which is where the DPF gets heated up to convert trapped soot into gas), which is annoying, but you at least don't have to fill up with DEF or risk the DEF injection system failing.
If it was legal to build these at industrial scale, we'd already have it in the US because there's blatant market demand for it. This is functionally no different from the shops putting 30 year old diesel engines in modern pickup trucks for the same reasons.
The emissions are so unreliable that the only legal market for vehicles without them in the US is... the federal government.
It could easily have been done with a basic ecu that was readable by a $20 cable to your laptop.
That being said, the DPF is the destroyer of modern engine reliability.
On top of this, I looked at Zero's job postings and they're desperately trying to hire a firmware lead to get the team to use Claude Code (precisely what I want managing a 100hp motor under my ass).
Not only are we in a world where everything is locked down with software, the software is about to get way worse and there's nothing you can do about it.
While not the same, I also feel similarly with a lot of IoT "smart" devices too, if my 1995 washing machine breaks beyond the point of repair, you bet I'm going to be trying to find another old reliable washer to replace it with. Plenty of things are just simply not built to last and IoT is more of just a trojan horse for implementing planned obsolescence for more household items.
https://www.swarmfarm.com/technology/
- West Australian grain farmer (4,500 hectares, barley, grains) reviews a fully automated driverless swarm bot in boom spray configuration:
As a general rule (there will be exceptions), Australian companies don't do that kind of lock-in .. Australia has strong consumer protection laws although it does currently lacks a "right to repair".
* https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/problem-with-a-product-or-...
* https://lawpath.com.au/blog/what-is-the-right-to-repair
The mechanical side of capital equipment maintenance is straight forward enough here, there's strong community of mechanically savvy types and generally mechanics and engineering aren't "opaque" as things can be visually inspected and taken apart .. software, however, is a whole other level.
I like to encourage open stacks, eg: Flight Gear has a lot in it ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlightGear ) and can be used to spin off grid coverage planning for aerial platforms with sensor feedback integration, not altogether too far away from something similar for ground platforms.
In the agricultural domain in Australia farmers can flex back against companies to a reasonable degree given the number and size of co-op's here (eg: https://www.cbh.com.au/ is owned by local farmers about me and can rumble in a way that John Deere has to respond to or drop out of consideration for billions in sales over a cycle of years)
The real problem I see with a company like (say) SwamFarm is being taken over by VC money, as the NZ GPS stock 'shock' collar invisible fence company was recently .. and now dairy farmers have their daily stock control decisions being "passed through" an off shore third party that can siphon data, increase charges, and enshittify.
Australia - I can't tell you as in my locale there was a move away from JD so no new JD's much - so the businesses selling them exclusively declined as well. The local farms are now even moving away from older New Hollands that got briefly popular when they first hit the scene but many are with never ending issues where they saved money - like using aluminium alloy for high pressure hydraulic pump gear and shaft - oh they do bend ... :rolls eyes:
What's a new JD look like these days. Aussie's do things a bit different, other parts of the world people might gnash teeth and complain - we just don't fucking go there any more and bitch quietly. I though tend towards the more hostile reaction with subtle jabs their company / business is on a downward path and bitch loudly to any poor sod unable to find an exit quick enough.
- Simple warranty support - No deep bench of customer support staff - No complex financing - Straightforward sales process
Heck, even the website is bare bones.
I hope this sets the trend for cars too.
I would happily buy a new car with a 2000s Japanese engine and no tech.
SMART BOLT TECHNOLOGY:
People aren’t buying them for price, but the first sentence discusses it as if it’s relevant.
My assumption are farmers are trying to skirt the eco rules for vehicles in some way. Which by the way is insanely annoying and has caused issues for all the farmers I know at one point or another. Worse, you can’t fix the ecosystems on your own so you have to get them serviced costing quite a bit and importantly putting your tractor out of commission for a while. It’s why older tractors have a premium
Also, the ursa tractors have warranties too…
They're using remanufactured 90s cummins for this reason. They're pre-DEF. Modern regulations have killed the diesel engine as a reliable workhorse. It's easy to write off the woes of this segment as corporate greed, but we've made it illegal to build a simple reliable tractor like this.
> The Kubota M5-111 is a 105.6 HP utility tractor that uses Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) to meet Tier 4 emission standards, with common issues including Code 202A, DEF sensor failures, and clogged injectors. The system includes a dedicated tank and filter (Part #1J508-19660). Owners often report issues with the DEF system causing power derates, leading some to consider deletion or repair, though these issues can cause significant downtime
ursa-ag.com For (a little bit) more info
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/01/europe/russia-farm-vehicl...
I'm sure this was meant to be a story about the bad guys being thwarted, but it only made my blood run cold. A single company can remotely destroy the agricultural sector of a country if they felt like it.
This is a welcome development.
Yes, of course, it needs to have a computer to decode and display images, but I don't want it to be running a stripped back version of Android, that shipped out of date and hasn't received any updates, with apps that are laggy and often not current relative to other "smart" providers, that also takes pictures of my screen once every thirty seconds to tell the manufacturer what I'm watching and for how long, to build a better marketing profile on me.
I want a big OLED panel with enough smarts to drive the screen. I will plug my own computer into the television, if the need should arise.
For anyone who likes rural shop repair videos of farm (mostly older), passenger, and commercial vehicles of all makes and ages from ancient to modern, they might appreciate Watch Wes Work.
Also, I know this is a strange parallel, but it feels similar to what Dell and HP did to their servers. They made the BIO so complicated that it takes 5-10 minutes for their severs to boot up. Using an older Dell server with a straightforward BIOS that boots up in 30 seconds feels awesome.
100 years ago I might cook in a cast iron pan and use a slide rule to compute.
Now I cook in a cast iron pan and use a 5nm scale multi core CPU to compute.
In 100 years I might cook in a cast iron pan and use a topological quantum computer to compute. In my home in a spinning city at a Lunar LaGrange point.
We are in the try everything with everything phase of early technological development.
Edit 2 to add: I think it's important to be specific about what the computing is for. If you just need to solve a small number of equations, then yes, you can do that with a slide rule. But in the written communication case above, the computing is only useful when done with at least the speed of an early microcomputer and paired with digital storage and/or networking and a variety of I/O devices. Still, we don't strictly need our modern supercomputers for that use case, except that it's now considered weird and limiting to use anything less. Also, I bring up the written communication use case because there is a rising backlash against allowing personal computers at all in certain contexts, such as education, because of AI-based cheating. I don't want disabled people like me to lose what we've gained from personal computing in the specific use case I described above. Maybe the solution is to normalize using less than a maximally powerful, Internet-connected personal computer in such contexts.
And how are you heating that pan? 100 years ago it was fire (wood mostly), today it's gas or electric resistance (mostly, induction is growing though) - what will it be in 100 years?
15 years ago, Dacia used to make stripped sedans that sold for as cheap as 7.5k euros. It was a wild success. Now, they've pivoted to making modern cars, still on the cheap side, but the cheapest now is a compact car that sells for 13k.
The only reason is that those modern cars have higher margins and there is no competition for cheap cars. So why make cheap cars to kill the market of higher margins ones?
The free market, if it works at all, should produce companies like wheelfront that caters to that share of the population.
Before buying new, aren't there enough tractors from the 60s, 70s, 80s that are still salvageable?
The general aviation world has Cessna 172s from the 50s still going strong; why buy new?
My understanding of the aviation market is that there are some bargains to be had with planes that are old but still very servicable. But if you are flying longer distances regularly, you kind of gravitate towards the more expensive ones. Because they go faster, use less fuel, are more comfortable, have more useful load, etc.
The point of a tractor is that is used to do useful work by farmers who earn their living working these things hard. If they break down, work stops until that can be fixed. The value of being able to fix these machines yourself is that you get them back in action quickly. But the value of a newer one is that it presumably wouldn't need a lot of fixing to begin with. And maximizing power while minimizing fuel usage means the job gets done quicker and at a lower cost. And that's what modern manufacturers sell of course.
IMHO, electric is going to revolutionize farming. Diesel is expensive (a lot more lately). And farmers burn a lot of it. Electric motors are small, reliable, quiet, etc. They have loads of torque. And if you are a farmer, you have plenty of space to harvest your own electricity with solar panels and maybe a wind mill and some batteries. There is a growing amount of high end stuff available in this space but also very affordable low end stuff. And this technology can be very simple and tinker friendly. Buy some old EV batteries wire them up and you can make anything with wheels move. Including really old tractors, pickup trucks, etc. Anything from the largest mining trucks to the smallest lawn mower can already be powered by batteries. And everything in between. With battery cost dropping, there are very few obstacles that prevent adoption left. Mostly import tariffs in the US.
It's not even close to that easy though is it? I've wanted to convert a car to an EV and it seems really complex.
EVs have less parts. There are some challenges with diagnostics for things like battery management systems. And given the high voltages, it helps if you know what you are doing with electrical systems.
Yes. But maybe not a 1:1 of current petroleum-powered equipment with an equivalent electric one? Say, crop dusting aircraft are not being replaced by electric powered crop dusting aircraft, but by (electric powered) crop dusting drones.
Could something similar happen for, say, tractors? A tractor is of course an extremely versatile tool, and as long as there's a human driving it there's a tendency towards ever bigger tractors in order to minimize labor/ha. But big tractors are already a bit too big and expensive for many not-huge farms, ground compaction is a problem with large weight etc. Could we see these replaced by a fleet of electrical drones (drones as in autonomous, not necessarily flying) rather than "just" an electrical tractor? Of course, there's a certain minimum power required to pull a plow etc., so maybe not? Of course, autonomous fleets etc. goes a bit against the idea of DIY-fixable. Or does it? A different skill-set than wrenching on an old tractor, sure.
(Though these days I've love something electric. I don't need long run time, I'm not doing row crops. Just market gardening and property maintenance stuff. All the electric stuff I see out there is aiming up at the high end and for autonomy / "smart" tractor stuff which I don't care about.)
I wonder about a hybrid version of this though, maybe Edison motors should collab
This isn't to say that tech can't be shoved in every other panel on the tractor - but hope this drives Big companies towards considering where tech is necessary and where it's not.
That’s the kind of MBA speak a giant corporate food production facility loves to hear, but not a farmer.
They can't scale this model up because they legally have to use rebuilt engines from the 90s to do it to get around modern diesel emissions regulations. It's illegal to build this kind of engine in the US new, there's no way to compete with Deere's scale.
The demand for older vehicles in certain segments is actually increasing
The new models have engines that are smaller turbos, that part is true — but they get >30% better fuel economy, and they output more power.
The reliability might become an issue down the road especially in hybrid engines but the data so far don’t seem to support your assertions. The one exception is maybe the Tundra 3.4L but that seems to still be ambiguous as to the root cause, and may just be mfg process error.
And why would company do that if that would put it far over warranty period?
That's incorrect. Virtually every turbo'd gas car runs slightly richer than stoich to use the unburnt fuel to manage temp/knock. Diesels, you actually get more efficiency out of with a turbo for free. With gas you're practically guaranteed to be throwing fuel out the pipe.
> they overstrain them
Debatable. Materials science and engine construction science have advanced significantly since the V6 and V8s of the 1980s and 1990s Toyotas. Almost every auto manufacturer on earth is capable of getting >100hp/L out of a gas engine reliably. Toyota is certainly not the only OEM doing this reliably at scale. This stuff is no longer exotic. Gas engines today are designed from the ground up to be turbocharged and direct injected (and in Toyota's case, both direct and port injected), and built with the cooling systems to match.
> The outcome is a strictly worse engine
No one makes or has made a perfect engine but there's a lot of romanticizing engines from the past. These newer engines make more peak torque, their torque curves start much lower in the RPM band and remain more useful through whole rev range, they burn significantly less fuel when not under load, and the hybrid electric drivetrain mean the gas engine spends less of its life idling or lugging at low speeds and high loads. Whether some of these tradeoffs are worth it is debatable, but in no way are these engines "strictly worse".
1.9 TDI
This doesn't really mean anything. You can build an engine at any point of the spectrum from naturally aspirated to turbocharged, to turbo-compound, to actually not having any pistons at all (e.g. the "turbofans" that we put on airliners). What you want is to match the engine to the machine and build it out of the right materials.
Most people don't know shit about engineering and have weak intuition about materials, stress and physics in general. What the common person thinks about a random engineering topic literally does not matter, because they are 90% wrong about everything. Regarding cars, it's more like 99%. People still recite torque figures like they mean anything, ffs. That bad boy with 200 Nm at the crank? Cool, I make 150 Nm pedalling a bike.
My previous car before an EV had a 1-litre 3-cylinder engine, a 1.0 TSI. Pure gas, not a hybrid. That's an engine that's rated for 81kW (it actually delivers a bit more than that) and that can do 60 mpg on country roads (regularly). When it came out in 2015, "car enthusiasts" were laughing hysterically at the idiots who'd buy the car and have to replace the engine every 2-3 years. 11 years later, the cars are driving around just fine. The 1.0 TSI, just like the entire EA211 family, is a good engine with no major reliability issues.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
But instead, we're getting EVs that are built more like smartphones.
Diesel prices will continue to rise so it's not clear what these farmers are actually signing up for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_%28automobiles%29#Glide...
It’s brought by all the NPOs in the world.
It’s simple, rugged, easy to repair, and cheap. You see them, all the time, on TV.
Yes because thy live in the John Deere future. This was not always the case, surely. You used to be able to take high school classes to learn how to fix a combustion engine, even a new one!
The economics of row-crop agriculture is "you gotta farm more land". That means spending as much time in the field as you can with as big a machine as you can.
So not only is time you spend fixing your tractor yourself time you're not spending on your primary job, it's also working on a machine that's just monstrously huge. Delegating that work to a specialist with specialized tools is a very reasonable way to live.
One of these days I'm going to buy one to restore, the way other men but the cars of their youth.
That entirely depends on your business goals. If you want to leverage debt to amass wealth you need scale to eke out a living after the debt burden takes most of your potential profit. The 4020 is going to fall well short of what is required there. Those who see farming as an income source rather than a wealth generator, however, don't need scale and can do quite well with the venerable 4020. Eight rows is plenty when you don't have the bank breathing down your neck wondering if you are going to cover your six figure loan payment this month.
It's a lot like the business of tech, really. Some want to build the startup that never turns a profit but sells for billions years into the future, while others want to build the small "mom and pop" that offers a lifestyle, even if it never makes them rich. Both are valid and viable approaches. It depends on what you want out of it.
There are authorized dealers who are not John Deere directly, but they are completely subservient to John Deere (they have to be otherwise they will not get access to the software tooling required to fix equipment), the semantic difference to a farmer is inconsequential, you will be overcharged[1] and scalped because the consequences of not paying is a multi-million-dollar heap of scrap because you cannot fix it yourself.
There are no independent tools to work on this equipment because selling a license to a 3rd party software would be in breach 1201 of the DMCA
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/john-deere-repair-lawsuit-settlem... [2]: https://apnews.com/article/deere-farm-repair-tractors-monopo...
John Deere's whole business model has been built around being the most repairable — ensuring that you can get the parts when you need them, not days or weeks later. I own farm equipment from all the major brands and I've been burned by that before. Deere is undeniably the winner in repairability.
They are quite protective of their intellectual property, that is true. Although what tech company isn't? I remember the time I wanted to see the service manual and it took a wink and a nod to get the service tech to decrypt it for me.
But, I mean, he did it, so... The fun thing about employees is that they are real people who don't really care what some nebulous figurehead in a far away place has to say. Especially when those employees don't work for Deere in the first place. I have no idea where you got that bizarre idea. You should step foot on a farm sometime.
Boeing and Airbus are incredibly protective of intellectual property for both safety reasons and protecting the process. They still provide repair manuals.
There are hundreds of sensors on modern John Deere tractors they REQUIRE the entire firmware to its respective module because they are locked to your serial number, that means you could buy two identical tractors and swap a part between them and both tractors would cease to operate correctly because the module rejects the non-programmed sensor, this is unacceptable.
Now you might say well John Deere has rights to protect its own IP to which I absolutely agree, and I also agree they have the right to protect themselves from liability arisen from say someone installing an aftermarket sensor. Why not make a disclaimer appear saying "This equipment is fitted with a non-certified aftermarket part) rather than making it completely useless "contact dealer" is not a valid diagnostic message.
Let's say you wanted to hack your tractor to install an aftermarket sensor, well now you have to break the digital lock (encrypted payload files) that is installed by John Deere congratulations that's actually against the law even if you own the equipment.
This isn't about emissions or safety or anything else it's about shitty rent-seeking behavior that directly disenfranchises everyone.
When you purchase something, you should be able to own it.
Some years ago I was stunned to read (tractor forum) a US based farmer lamenting even though JD parts used, they'd had a third party service their tractor, and verified via diagnostics ... and basically had to wait for a JD tech to travel out and unlock their tractor so it could work. I'd assume that's the sort of behaviour that did John Deere in - travel and unlocking fees ffs.
I used to like JD, I've got one though 70s vintage.
Even if you have a service contract you're still gonna be pissed at the downtime cost of having a tech drag their ass out to wherever you are to initiate a forced regen or something.
You might be pissed that the machine malfunctioned at all, but you kind of have to accept that if you want to be in the business. It comes with the territory. But you are not going to personally travel all the way from the office out to the field to fix it. That's insanity.
The small farmer who has to do it all to make the business viable has more reason to want to fix it himself, but they live on the used market. The small farmer can't afford those new machines. Have you seen how expensive new equipment is?
And that is exactly what Ursa is gambling on here: That if they remove all but the bare necessities that they can get the price point of new down to something small farmers can actually afford. However, it remains to be seen if that is compelling enough. Not having all the modern conveniences does take its toll on your mind and body after a long day in the field. A modern-spec used machine may still be more appealing to the small farmer who has to operate his own equipment — and let's face the harsh reality here: even if you aren't personally going to operate it, hired help isn't coming if you don't give them the most luxurious equipment available. They can just as easily go work for the farm that was willing to invest in it.
In fact, their TractorHouse profile shows that they are still struggling to sell last year's models. If there was demand, why hasn't that demand already gobbled up the stock? "I guess it would be cool to own one if it was given to me for free" isn't demand.
The other thing about tractors is that the three point hitches, PTOs, etc etc, have been standardized forever, so there's very little lock in in terms of, swap out your JD for and IH and away you go, so I'm curious if eg modern seed drills have any fancy tech which locks you in.
Technically there are standards, but you know how that goes in the real world... Funnily enough, a friend bought a new tractor and planter, both from John Deere, and they weren't even compatible with each other. The tractor needed to have the cab removed to install the necessary hardware (ethernet) to be compatible with the planter.
> have been standardized forever
Hydraulic hose couplers didn't find common adoption until the mid-80s/early-90s, which is surprisingly late.
It is not like John Deere actually has a monopoly. There is just as much CNH (CaseIH, New Holland) seen out in the fields, and even when you want all the bells and whistles, Fendt is rapidly becoming understood to be the true king of tech. What John Deere does have going for it is that they generally do better than everyone else at keeping parts in stock where the parts are needed; local to the farmer. Ironically, repairability is where John Deere finds the win at the end of the day.
In what way?
I’m not a farmer, but sometimes I sell generators. Even today, some specs only allow CAT and Cummins, even though Generac and Kohler have been around for decades and are perfectly good options, they haven’t been around as long as CAT and Cummins.
When purchasing capital equipment, some customers want to buy from a company with some longevity instead of a random startup, even if it costs more.
I’m always highly skeptical of startups in mature industries like farming (~10,000 years old, or hundreds of years for mechanized agriculture) with many established players already operating. I saw an article in the last year or two about a small directional boring machine from a startup company that claimed to be advancing the industry, but multiple manufacturers like Ditch Witch already manufacture and sell the exact same piece of equipment, they’re just not claiming to be revolutionary to attract investor capital.
huh, why not?
Like before, those next in line buying used equipment on smaller farms are more likely to have free time to spend on doing their own repairs and may even enjoy doing it as a hobby, but like before, the are limited to what's available on the used market. If the BTOs aren't buying Kubotas[1], it won't be a used option. This segment of farmers aren't choosing what enters the market initially.
[1] And generally they don't, but the big-time snow pushers seem to really like them, so in reality you do have options even on the used market. It turns out that tractors aren't just for farmers.
And as a farmer who owns equipment from across all the major brands (and some unheard of brands to boot), you are right that John Deere is most reliable for having parts in stock. I've been burned by the others having to wait a week on parts to be delivered from who knows where. That is not a fun position to be in. Repairability is where John Deere has the clear advantage. That is, just as you point out, why they are most popular. Nothing else matters if your equipment doesn't work.
You pay a lot more for that luxury, but when the clock is ticking...
Farmers are self-sufficient in incredible ways, but maintaining a multi-million dollar combine is pushing it. They can do oil changes, filter changes, replace consumables on implements, and do basic trouble shooting, but there are limits.
And yes, time does matter. That's why farmers tend to help each other out a lot. Field catch fire because you didn't clean off your combine the previous day? It's going to be your neighbor coming out and helping firebreak your field so you lose 5 acres instead of 500. Can't afford to have your own sprayer for fertilizer, etc? You hit up the co-op.
And farmers have crop insurance. Doesn't make them whole, but the idea that they're going to be eating dirt if they harvest a day late is silly.
Even without limits, you're never going to be as efficient as someone who fixes the same failure every single day. I've certainly fallen into that trap before. Sure, I got it fixed myself in the end, but in hindsight I'd have been back in the field a lot sooner if I had simply brought in the expert. When time is of the essence, putzing around trying to fix it yourself is not the optimal choice.
And that's not even considering the need for parts. Driving all the way to the dealership and back to get the parts you need is much more time consuming than the dealership tech bringing the parts with him when he comes. He only has to travel half as far as you do.
You don't really need that much tech in a tractor. you just want to make it work, and make it last long enough.
Airplane engines are rebuilt every 5,000ish miles because they’re constantly running at like 50% load, it’s much harder on the engine than moving a car, a tractor is very similar.
Car engines do very little work once you’re up to speed, it only takes a fraction of the max power available to keep the car moving. This is why EVs are possible.
Running a tractor engine under load requires a lot of energy, battery density isn’t quite there yet, diesel has around 50x more energy by weight than a battery.
I could imagine tethered tractors with power line tensioned in the air, but the grid building cost will be quite high for intermittent usage. Only some land usages and plot shapes would work economically.
I think Monarch tractor just folded up and sold their assets, for example. They were a nice looking product but did what I described above.
Innovation here will happen in Europe and China, not here in North America. "Tractor" here in North America means big giant machine that is owned in a fleet by a giant corporation that manages multiple properties, and works over a dozen fields in a few days.
Every time I've looked into it for my hobby farm, a compact utility tractor that is electric ends up either being vapourware or twice to three times the price and missing features.
For electrification to really proceed in ag, we need a revolution in the paradigm, something that removes most of the energy heavy processes.
Furthermore, when have sanctions achieved anything other than suffering for the people?
Plus, I'm pretty sure that some sanctions are very convenient for some parties on this side of the game.
These laws de facto prevent most of Belorussians leave country long term and force them to work (even if they do not need to):
- Decree No. 3 “О содействии занятости населения”(including redaction from 2018)
- Decree №278 and Decree №294
There is more laws added overtime, reality on the ground even more harsher of laws - North Korea style. I doubt anybody would argue that there is no slavery in NK.
I feel that some sanctions indeed `achieved anything other than suffering for the people`, but I did not research.
Although, honestly, from my farmer perspective I think that is even a stretch. Someone needing to replace their 50 year old machine right now is more likely to look at a 20 year old used machine with a smaller outlay than the brand new Ursa. They are considerably less pricy than a Deere or Fendt, but still pretty capital insensitive relative to what a farmer in the market they are trying to address can justify.
Granted, there is no doubt someone out there who is willing to pay for the "new car smell". There is always someone out there who will buy what you are selling, no matter what it is you are trying to sell. The question, as always, is: Are there enough buyers out there to keep the cash flowing? The fact that they still have 2025 models sitting on their lot that aren't moving, I'm thinking not, but we shall see. Kudos for them being willing to try.
We'll see what, if anything, actually becomes available.
If a family car energy usage is 1x, then a light duty truck is about 1.5x, and a heavy duty truck doing hauling or towing is about 4x. A medium sized farm tractor would probably be 20x or more.
In that light, it's not hard to see how cars and light trucks could fare well with today's battery energy density, while heavy duty trucks are at the limits. For a tractor, it's not even close.
I do think we'll see smaller tractors going electric in about 10-15 years.
Which is to say an electric tractor would be great for me, but for most farmers useless.
Now, hang a high voltage wire down from a big-ass catenary, so you don't need batteries, and it'll be cheaper upfront and in use, but nobody does that because of 1. safety 2. if everybody did it the grid would need upgrades
It is with glee that I will watch it burn.
On the topic of Smart Home stuff (which is the only topic I'm even slightly qualified to talk about) I've heard about people wanting "dumb houses" after initially people wanting "smart houses". It's my opinion that this desire is driven mainly due to bad experiences and doing smart homes the "wrong way".
What do I mean by that? Either they got burned by XYZ Smart company going under and all their cloud-dependant devices dying/bricking. they had a system like Control4 which required authorized resellers to make even basic changes [0], and/or they were overwhelmed with juggling 5 different apps/platforms that don't talk to each other. That doesn't mean smart homes are bad, just that the hardware/software was bad. I fully recognize that for the "normal" person the only options are currently "bad hardware/software" or "dumb house" but there _are_ better alternatives.
My philosophy for "Smart Home" is one of progressive enhancement (and graceful degradation). What that means is everything I "enhance" with "smarts" should still work the old way that people are accustomed to. Every light in the house can be controlled via "Alexa|Siri|Google turn off the Kitchen Light" but they can also be turned off/on by walking over to the wall and flipping a switch [1]. This means Smart Switches _not_ Smart Bulbs [2]. If my Home Assistant (yes, I'm one of those people) server goes offline, everything still works, the switches work, the door lock works with a key, the garage still opens. My "smart-ifying" of the house is not replacing the way to do something, it's only adding additional control.
In addition to that, and something that should come as no surprise, I refuse to use a cloud, or at least depend on a cloud for my smart home. For this reason I prefer Z-Wave/Zigbee devices. If the manufacturer goes out of business it doesn't matter (no pun intended [3]). While I can, and have, used cloud integrations with Home Assistant, I try to make sure that's just a stopgap to decide if I want to go all-in. I own a few Z-wave devices from companies that don't exist anymore and they have been chugging along without issue for years. I love that stability.
There is nothing in my house where you have to walk over to a wall tablet to control something or open an app on your phone, I would consider that a failure. Everything flows through Home Assistant, it's the brain, I don't want multiple apps fighting or different ecosystems that don't mesh (radio-wise or functionality-wise).
What does this have to do with tractors? Glad you asked! I see this as the same for tractors, they should absolutely be "dumb" with the ability to control/query parts of it and add the "smarts" through an external system. Whatever the equivalent of Z-wave would be for monitoring/controlling the device, not something built-in or required for functionality. A modular, non-locked-down system. I'm sure we are nowhere near that point but I write all this as a "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater", I think John Deere was wrong in how they went about adding "smarts" but I don't think the idea is without merit either. They went down the greedy, anti-right-to-repair route which is clearly wrong.
I'd love to see a combo of Ursa Ag's tractor as a base platform where smarts can be added to it without compromising it's repairability. A take on the "naked robotic core"-idea if you will.
[0] And each time you have a authorized reseller come out they try to sell you on an expensive upgrade because they make (most) their money on selling you stuff, not maintaining it. I really dislike Control4 and things like it.
[1] Point of clarification, I use Decora style paddles as is common on smart switches. The only downside (IMHO) to my system is they always "rest" in the middle orientation so they are "worse" than "dumb switches" in that you can't look at the switch and see the state it's in. That said, 3-way switches have already eroded this ability and I feel like this is an acceptable trade off. Maybe in the future people will care enough to make the switch represent the state correctly (with little servos flipping it) but I don't feel like I'm missing much. You may disagree.
[2] My exception to this rule is I will allow a Smart Bulb as long as there is also a Smart Switch. Maybe you can't change to color temperature via hardware on the wall but you can always still turn it on/off at the wall. Graceful degradation.
[3] My information might be out of date but I have very little interest in Thread/Matter, I don't want my smart devices to _ever_ talk to the cloud. Which is why I love Z-wave/Zigbee, they talk to my hub, my hub talks to whatever I want/approve. I never want my devices updating (or more likely, bricking) due to the cloud. I understand that Thread/Matter do not immediately mean "cloud" and in fact might even require local control but I'll believe it when I see it. So far Thread/Matter have been a massive nothing-burger IMHO. Maybe in a few years I'll be all-in on it but so far, I don't find it compelling at all.
Also the easiest way to achieve high WAF. I added an internet-connected (but self-hosted) garage door controller. My wife instantly got defensive about things when I said I was going to do this until I said that nothing at all that works now would change. It would add a new feature, not subtract anything. The old remotes work. The wall buttons work. It's just that you can do it from your phone, too. Been very handy, actually.
> It would add a new feature, not subtract anything. The old remotes work. The wall buttons work. It's just that you can do it from your phone, too.
Exactly! If I'm doing my "job" correctly then I should be able to add "smarts" without anyone noticing at all. It's purely additive. It lowers my stress levels immensely as well since there is a never a "P1" emergency of "The lights won't turn on" or "I can't open the garage door" (unless something lower-level is broken, like the power is out or the garage opener burned out).
I want guests to be able to come to my house and not even notice it's "smart". They should be able to stay in the guest room and not think twice about it. Yes, there will be laminated sheet in the side table telling them what the lights/fan are called if they want to talk to the Echos to control it and there will be a labeled remote (Z-Wave) on the bedside table so they can toggle the fan/lights from the bed but none of that is required. They can control it all from the switches on the wall if they want.
I bought a used ReplayTV circa 2003. She came home and instantly said, wtf did you do to the TV? Three days later, the 120 GB hard drive I had bought to quadruple the storage arrived and I told her that she needed to watch all her shows because the software didn’t allow transferring recordings. She was apoplectic.
DVR junkie from day 1.
The problem for farmers isn't actually just the idea of one company that's decided to make $$$$ on servicing even for unlocking a repair that's even been carried out for by a third party - it's just many newer tractors have not been suitably robust or farmers are finding the specialised parts come at premium prices or those in countries that are a bit remote to tractor production, international delivery times are not exactly thrilling. It's not just electrics, but electronics is the more notable short coming.
The biggest issue in an agricultural setting is robustness - wiring is one element that is prone to being pulled out transiting a rough paddock or pasture or chewed via mice and rats. After wiring is the quality of switches available for hostile environments - in my locale tractor owners had come to accept every so often they'd be replacing a switch every so often.
I predict 6 months before John Deer gets the Alberta UCP on the line and gets a law passed that bans "unsafe tractors" (or the like)
https://www.thedrive.com/news/new-tractor-with-12-valve-cumm...
... and only briefly pause to wonder if it's because of all the anti-cookie, anti-tracking stuff in Safari.
https://community.cloudflare.com/t/website-inaccessible-from...
I hit this first on my VPN, so I disconnected, then got asked again from my home wifi. I dunno why I look like a bot to Cloudflare. I hate these prompts and it’s too bad they’re all over the web.
This article requires Age Verification. Please hold up your passport to the sensor on your device to continue.
User: "I consent"
Website: "I consent"
Cloudflare: "I don't"
Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?
Yes, a lot of modern tractors are locked down due to predatory dealer service lock-in, but they're also complex and locked down due to emissions regulations, which are ostensibly a net societal gain. The classic HN "everything should be totally open and free" conversation really needs to happen through this lens IMO.
Seems to be that they are just importing chinese built tractors and rebranding them: https://www.hanwoagri.com/tractor/all-purpose-medium-tractor...
Their facility in bowden AB is basically a tiny garage.