Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

thedrive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 160 posts

Re: Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

#151

Post by jp0d »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #149
jp0d wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind if you downvote my comment. That's perfectly acceptable if you don't like my opinion. I respect that. No harm done there. :) It's true that everything I know about EVs are from personal experience of people I know. Believe it or not I'm happy that coal is on its way out. I wish it happened sooner. My sister owned a Tesla model 3 in California for 3 years. She had a lot of fun in it and used it as a daily…

> using a fast charger all the times can damage batteries. Is this actually true? A Google search suggests that there are lots of studies showing that 25 fast charging cycles wrecks the battery but I have driven my Model S from Norway to the UK and back three times which is about 12 k km altogether and I used Tesla chargers exclusively on the journey. The practical range is about 300 km so I must have charged much mo…

To be honest I have read it online as well. I don't know if it's true. I reckon if the battery is designed to take fast charging all the time, it should be okay. Another thing that affects batteries is weather. In colder climates like Europe you're probably okay. We have had reports of batteries losing half their capacity due to heat in Australia. Those were all Nissan Leafs, which didn't have any active cooling in place. We don't have an extensive supercharger network either. You'll probably be okay in East coast region. Forget about charging your car, in some remote areas you're probably not gonna get petrol either. You can only get diesel. Seems like EU is far ahead in EV adoption than AU.

Re: Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

#152

Post by paulkrush »

danielheath wrote: post #86
paulkrush wrote: post #54

Anyone have good, in production, examples where equipment has gotten smaller than before because a human no longer needs to operate it?

Predator drones?

Well robots to carry camera/sensors are clearly a good answer to my question. I would say a rumba is a weak answer.

Re: Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

#153

Post by lambdatronics »

heisenbit wrote: post #141

We know electric drive trains are smaller and have more torque and allow very different architectures. But thinking about powered accessories I can see even more potential as placing an additional motor is way less material intensive than transmitting mechanical power.

And also safety! Power take-off injuries[0] can be really horrifying.

[0]http://farminjuryresource.com/atv-injuries/farming-injuries/...

Re: Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

#155

Post by VVertigo »

whizzkid wrote: post #17

+ Really good idea to make use of the electricity in other ways than just driving. (generators, lamps, etc.) + 10 hours covers up a good day in field. - a lot of farms are away from electricity sources to charge and sometimes internet connection is non-existent. It is risky to leave a 50k machine on its own to do its job. And what to do if battery runs out on the field? - how long does it take to recharge? A lot of f…

I could see farm equipment as a great use case for swappable battery packs. There are loaders readily available for lifting them into place and they could be made easy to access as the equipment does not need to be compact.

Re: Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

#156

Post by Siira »

theraido wrote: post #134

This is a nice accomplishment, a step forward. But to some extends it's a step forward in a backwards system. It's a bit like the 'if cannibals start eating with forks, is it progress'-question. Agriculture has become a industry of scale, but that might be it's undoing. It might be better to have an electric tractor doing the ploughing, but wouldn't it be even better to do less ploughing? With the invention of fertil…

(Just a reminder that scaling is very important. A lot of people have problems procuring food, probably most people, actually. Solutions that work for rich people are just skipping the problem entirely.)

Re: Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

#157

Post by nxmnxm99 »

nanna wrote: post #56
nxmnxm99 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've tried DDG reliably for nearly a year. A good 30% of the time I end up having to run my query on Google anyway. I will literally pay money for a search engine that's privacy focused and can get closer to Google in terms of performance.

Personally I need to switch from ddg to Google maybe 0.1% of my searches, but at least for you you've managed to avoid Google 70% of the time, and it's not like adding a !g to do so takes more a milisecond.

I agree, and I'm still very thankful for DDG. Would gladly pay to have someone take me even further.

Re: Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

#158

Post by nxmnxm99 »

nitrogen wrote: post #104
nxmnxm99 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I've tried DDG reliably for nearly a year. A good 30% of the time I end up having to run my query on Google anyway. I will literally pay money for a search engine that's privacy focused and can get closer to Google in terms of performance.

A good 30% of the time I end up having to run my query on Google anyway. A 70% reduction in Google sounds like a win.

Absolutely it is.

Re: Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

#159

Post by kwhitefoot »

jp0d wrote: post #151
kwhitefoot wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using a fast charger all the times can damage batteries. Is this actually true? A Google search suggests that there are lots of studies showing that 25 fast charging cycles wrecks the battery but I have driven my Model S from Norway to the UK and back three times which is about 12 k km altogether and I used Tesla chargers exclusively on the journey. The practical range is about 300 km so I must have charged much mo…

To be honest I have read it online as well. I don't know if it's true. I reckon if the battery is designed to take fast charging all the time, it should be okay. Another thing that affects batteries is weather. In colder climates like Europe you're probably okay. We have had reports of batteries losing half their capacity due to heat in Australia. Those were all Nissan Leafs, which didn't have any active cooling in p…

Europe varies wildly in uptake of EVs because incentives and infrastructure vary so much. Here in Norway 50% of new car sales are pure EV and there are chargers all over the place. Ten percent of cars in the country are now electric. A lot of petrol stations, particularly Circle K, are installing chargers too.

But in the UK the story is very different, 10% of new car sales and a total of less than 2% of cars are EVs.

The difference is probably down to the taxes on cars. Here in Norway expensive cars are doubly expensive because of progressive taxation on them from which EVs are exempted but in the UK you just get paid back a few thousand pounds by the state when you buy an EV. So here EVs are comparable in cost to ICE cars especially at the expensive end of the price range.

Re: Electric Monarch tractor can plow a field without a driver and run for ten hours

#160

Post by justinlloyd »

calabin wrote: post #122
justinlloyd wrote: post #112

Next up: A semi-autonomous backhoe and dozer that can intelligently dig a level bottomed hole to specific cubic dimensions with equipment accessible ramp and all the waste material piled neatly on the sides in safe and sane manner and then can also load that same material into a waiting dump truck. Can also work in a swarm of two or three machines for more effective material handling. All controlled by a remote opera…

You worked on a project like this? Sounds interesting! Are you able to tell us more, or if it was ever implemented?

Yes. No. Yes.
Post reply on HN