Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price • Hacker News Board

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#521

Post by hattmall » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:03 AM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #488

mvkel wrote: post #460

Reduce, reuse, recycle. 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?

Cessna 172s are great if you are learning to fly. But most people using these things for actually getting from A to B will be looking for something with a bit more range, speed, etc. That still might be sixty year old plane but one with a bigger engine; or two of them even. And if you want to go really fast you get something with a turbo prop or even jet engines. The newer ones are a bit more efficient with the fuel…

>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.

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#522

Post by appplication » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:03 AM UTC

jadbox wrote: post #104

jmward01 wrote: post #59

I want this for cars but to keep the modern powertrain. So an EV without the tracking/touch screens, etc etc. Or an internal combustion engine car that is just simple and efficient (and again, no tracking). I'll take the low-tech but nice features like heated seats and power windows still thank you.

I'd love this. I really don't want my car to be an iPhone with "apps" and random background software on it. The car touchscreen was perhaps the worst design choice in the history of the automobile, and is likely the cause of countless crashes. It's insane when I see car UIs that have the 'cancel / go back' button located in DIFFERENT areas depending on the screen context.

I always thought of it this way: software engineering/UI/UX to most car companies is a cost center. Something to be minimized, workers to be provided minimal resources and pay. The compensation is not competitive with what you’d find at a tech company, but they’re hiring from the same talent pool.

The effect of this is obvious and felt in the end product.

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#523

Post by diogenescynic » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:14 AM UTC

I predict the next trend in technology will be low tech or analog whenever possible like SpeedQueen washer/dryers, etc. It's funny looking at antique appliances that actually have superior functionality and features to modern ones. There are old washing machines that have much faster rinse rotation speeds and can empty the water within seconds and almost always have replaceable parts. We need to somehow require machines and appliances be built like this and not this disposable trash we have become used to.

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#524

Post by marsven_422 » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:15 AM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #211

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any technology from before the time of your grandparents, and often parents, is usually perceived to be "not fancy". Because then those elders can't tell you in your childhood what life was like before that technology. So in your lived experience that technology was always there. Reading history later on, doesn't change your emotional experiences.

Freeze LLM progress right here and the future is still totally inconcievable. Humans who have only ever known being able to talk to machines...

[dead]

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#525

Post by 9rx » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:23 AM UTC

greedo wrote: post #270

idiotsecant wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're pretty confident for someone who fundamentally does not understand the issue. During harvest season even hours of delay can be disastrous for farms that are barely solvent in the first place. When your only option is to call the dealer and hope and pray they deign to visit your farm in a timely fashion it doesn't matter how good the warranty is or is not. Farmers need to be self sufficient because time is mone…

LOL. If you're a row cropper, you're running a big combine. Several grain trucks. Lots of expensive gear. Gear breaks down, that's why you buy something reliable, that has techs in your area who can fix things quickly, with a parts network that stocks stuff from decades back. Farmers are self-sufficient in incredible ways, but maintaining a multi-million dollar combine is pushing it. They can do oil changes, filter c…

> but there are limits.

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.

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#526

Post by simplyluke » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:35 AM UTC

Late to the party here, so I don't expect this to get a lot of traction, but I'd like to point out that part of the reason this hasn't existed until recently as an option in the US is because it's functionally illegal for it to exist.

> 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.

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#527

Post by simplyluke » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:39 AM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #90

That's what I always want -- all of my appliances should look like the ones we got in the 90s/2000s. Some Chinese companies should take this niche or maybe not-niche field, sell at a premium, which hopefully is still cheaper than smart ones.

> Some Chinese companies should take this niche or maybe not-niche field, sell at a premium

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.

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#528

Post by 9rx » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:43 AM UTC

vablings wrote: post #98

saalweachter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that tractors are also getting massive . 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 wit…

The issue is that the specialized employees is not someone you hire on payroll who has access to tools you purchase. They must be a John Deere employee who comes from out of state and costs you $$$$$$ to calibrate a sensor that could just be a simple menu button and a 20 second wait

If John Deere is sending a tech, you've encountered something that could never be just a simple menu button. You've found a major flaw that they need to investigate in detail. John Deere would never send a tech for routine troubleshooting/repairs. That falls on the local dealership franchises. Their employees are not John Deere employees.

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#529

Post by simplyluke » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:43 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #82

Is part of the appeal due to the fact that being remanufactured engines they don't need modern emissions control, aka Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF)? Farmers hate DEF.

That's most of it. It gets lost in the right to repair conversation, I think because many of the same individuals who care about that also tend to be very pro-environmental-regulation, but one has to take a step back and acknowledge the fact that the EPA made it illegal to build this tractor new instead of with a rebuilt truck engine from the 90s. You literally cannot build a legal diesel tractor in the US that doesn't involve an ECU, sensors, DEF, and all the proprietary electronics to go along with those systems.

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.

Re: Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

#530

Post by simplyluke » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 4:47 AM UTC

vondur wrote: post #124

This is great, if there is some real competition, then we can see John Deere will have to figure out how to compete. Either with lower prices or less lock in.

> if there is some real competition

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.