Demand Is Booming for New No Tech, Repairable Tractor

There's no fundemental reason even a very fancy trsctor should need an Internet connection. Even with RTK GPS for ultra high precision positioning, you can operate a base station locally, and this is getting increasingly accessible. (You could do it as a hobbyist for about $400 worth of parts).

While this is true, for many customers who aren't technical (in a computer sense, since they may have significant highly technical expertise in another field, such as agriculture), "tech" (meaning computers) just means what we'd call anti-features since from their vantage point everything with a computer (or with "tech") isn't respecting their ownership rights. And, even among people who understand the distinction, there's a reasonable expectation that computers embedded in products that don't specifically market otherwise will have such anti-features.

So, even if computers in and of themselves are completely valid in such product categories saying "No Tech" (which means "no computers") is a great way to market to people who really just want to avoid anti-ownership anti-features.

Lastly, I find it mildly amusing that a tractor (which is very clearly a form of technology, in the traditional definition of the word where fire and printing presses are technology too) is now being marketed as having no technology.

The problem is computer technology in its current state is fundamentally hard to trust. Without reading the source code and knowing the full source of all external services, and hoping the terms of service or external source code don’t change in the future, you really can’t trust anything. There is no authority that can guarantee “this will always work until it physically breaks, and even then be repairable”. Conventional parts and circuits can be more easily repaired and even reverse engineered if needed.

The issue that breaks the camel's back isn't just the cost of the repair--it's that farmers can't find enough service people during harvest time.

The timeliness of the repair is more important than anything at harvest time. Farmers have to be able to repair their own equipment or risk suffering an egregiously expensive loss.

Other people can start manufacturing the parts if the demand is big enough and the designs are available or can be reverse engineered.

Not familiar with this world, but they could use relatively standard, widely used parts to build the tractor. For example, Yanmar engines are widely used in the marine world. The engine choice is abstracted away from the boat (for certain types of boats) and you don’t rely on the boat manufacturer sticking around. Everything can be retrofitted.

I worked at the Henry Ford / Greenfield Village. They have a fleet of historical vehicles (Model T, Model AA, etc) and mechanics that are very passionate about the vehicles. They buy used and get whatever they can’t source made.

> Ursa will probably be gone in 10 years

Or worse, absorbed by one of the big manufacturers.

Metal 3D printers are getting cheaper by the year. We're not far from downloading parts and printing them out at home.

Cuba kept US cars from the 1950 running. And with 3d printing, AI, and enough demand this might get easier.

Remember tho that space programs use explosive bolts that are hardly dumb !

Did they integrate a torque measurements into the bolt?

> You can look into Eastern Europe

Looks at Eastern Europe [1]

[1] - https://i.iplsc.com/000HE4JV5MOLXWPW-C124.webp

It is called industrial appliances, it costs fortune but will probably work forever with proper maintenance.