241–250 of 270 posts
I have the feeling someone will become very rich by buying up all the old used diesel trucks in the world and keeping them going when EVs take over the world in 4 years.
Good luck running a electric tractor rig moving 120,000lb (modern quad-track are ~60,000lb, plus the drill, plus the fert/seed cart) all day long...
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There's nothing anti-free market about Open Source.
Except copyleft, the GNU project, and all other viral licenses
Anyone can (and has) form a commune in the US, too. There's nothing to stop you.
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Leasing and/or renting: Fine. But making a monopoly on providing parts and services is not a good thing. People end up paying 2000 dollar for a 2 dollar repair. Imagine the world when buying a new car/truck/tractor is less expensive than replacing the brakes for example. This is how the world works right now.
>People end up paying 2000 dollar for a 2 dollar repair. That's the entire world economy. Have you watched Shark Tank? "What do you sell it for and what is your landed price." Mark is smiling and clapping at the people who manage to sell a $2 part for $100, the bigger the ripoff the more he loves it, they've achieved the American Dream. The reality in the Apple/John Deer situation is that the profit is going back int…
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An old Belarus 420A is a simple tractor. Even a modern 742 or 1220 isn't that complex. But it's simply not as capable as a Fastrac 4 or 8 series, or a Valtra N or C series, or a Deere 6, 7 or 8 series for example. They're just not in the same league in terms of what they can do with tool management, fitness for specific tasks or tool interop. As a single example, there's nothing that Belarus make that I'd want to use…
But isn't this self-defeating reasoning? on one side you say things need to be simpler to repair, on the other you say simple technology doesn't cover your needs. A lot of these advanced features are so complex and so intertwined to each other that you really want only a qualified person to be able to "try to fix it"
The new tractors contain computers and need tools. Manufacturers refuse to sell tools and placed equivalent of DRM on computers to stop you repairing your tractor on purpose. They make their supplirs sign contracts where the supplier is not allowed to sell parts to anyone else. None of these issues are due to complexity, all of them about you loose property rights over your possessions and turning physical goods into a subscribtion model
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I also grew up in a rural high school with a large farming population. I categorize farmers into three types: 1. Professional - Usually highly educated, good business sense. Probably obtained an advanced degree in agriculture science, though not always, some self-educate very successfully. These farmers generally do not like John Deere and think they are overpriced, not as good as they once were, and find the lack of…
I also grew up in rural areas, and I agree with throwaway. your comments are condescending and also inaccurate. The more 'uneducated' farmers took pride in fixing their equipment, especially their tractors. Your comments are so far off I wonder if you even grew up in such an area or if you didn't really know your classmates at all. For one thing, who in the heck lives in a rural area knows that many types of farmers.…
Making something that only you can repair can be quite a lucrative business. This documentary is quite interesting: McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4
A similar thing is happening with EVs. Many car dealers don't make their money from selling cars, they make most of their money from being the only authorized repair shop for said car model. And to keep the warranty valid, you need to service the car at an authorized shop. EVs, by design, don't require as much maintenance or as often as ICE cars. This will result in a disruption in the existing chain at some point. W…
Brakes, coolant, tires, gearbox oils? Your EV still has all that. The power unit itself on an EV may be simpler, but mechanical failures in an engine in an ICE car are pretty damn rare. You're not servicing anything inside the engine, just like you're not taking apart the electric motor in your EV for maintenance.
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The DMCA is the least of your worries. The EPA has figured out that the only only reason people actually want to update software on their tractors is to turn off emissions controls.
Emission control suit of requirements (both hardware & software) make these tractors failure more likely. Eg. from a youtube farmer in Sask, Ca., his NH tractor wiring harness failed because highly corrosive DEF was puked all over it. Wiring hardness is only needed to fine tune injection pump & the pletora of sensors because of regulations, and DEF is only needed because of regulations. All of this decrease the usefu…
No-one wants to sell hardware any longer, it's not as profitable as providing it on a subscription (dare we say "rent") and forcing all support, maintenance and additions to go through your channels as part of the subscription package. Unfortunately this trend is everywhere now. It happened to servers, media, has started to happen to cars... but it's happened already to agricultural hardware. Super profitable if you…
Done right, this could actually be better. I own a lawn mower. In fact I usually own two lawn mowers--the new one and the one I just need to repair a bit. All of my neighbors own lawn mowers. We all use our lawn mowers about an hour per week. It's extremely wasteful to purchase 5 lawn mowers to perform 5 hours of mowing per week. We could all hire Suwanda down the street to mow our lawns, but that would cost a lot mo…
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You must know my neighbour. He was running a Kubota for a year or two, but it didn't take him long to replace it with a Deere. I have most of the major brands in my shed. I don't particularly care much about what colour I'm using. Purchases have been made based on cost, which has included some green equipment when a great auction find has been found. My experience says that JD has the UX nailed. When you're spending…
This made me think of how many developers (who spend 10 hrs/day in front of their screen) choose Apples products. A linux machine might be better on performance, maintainance, and all that, but Linux does not care about UX the way Apple does.