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Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

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

#71

Post by newsclues »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #8

Wish they sold something in the compact utility segment. 40-60hpish. I'd love an affordable Canadian made tractor for property maintenance / smaller farms. (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…

Yeah though about the snow plow market in rural areas.

I wonder about a hybrid version of this though, maybe Edison motors should collab

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

#72

Post by rolph »

greedo wrote: post #56
rolph wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have a farmall hand cranked tractor, going on 90 years old, so far its been rubber parts, and clutch pads. 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 reformul…

And how many acres are you farming on it? Today's world of agriculture is much higher tech-based (for many good reasons, primarily yield) than back in the horse and buggy days of farming.

5.75; 7.5; and 42.6.

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

#73

Post by rconti »

dev_hugepages wrote: post #19
itopaloglu83 wrote: post #5

Thank you Cloudflare for making it impossible to read news, and yes I am a human.

On HN, I often see comments like this, complaining about Cloudflare blocking access to pages. It makes me wonder if it’s due to a particular setup that triggers bot detection – like Tor or no-JS – that HN readers often use, or if Cloudflare has too many false positives.

I don't have that _particular_ problem, but I often gripe about how no website seems to be able to remember that I've used this device before ...

... and only briefly pause to wonder if it's because of all the anti-cookie, anti-tracking stuff in Safari.

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

#74

Post by whalesalad »

holoduke wrote: post #69

What is it with American companies that eventually always try to sell crap and low moral products/services. As if the people are educated in luring people into traps to only benefit themselves.

this is what happens to every publicly traded company

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

#75

Post by nickff »

estimator7292 wrote: post #68
nickff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever-more-restrictive government regulations are what allows these OEMs to ‘leverage’ their market power this way. I am not sure that a new regulation can solve it, as these sorts of mandates don’t seem to have worked in any other market.

Remember that those regulations are written by the OEMs they benefit and whom bribe legislators to pass those regulations. 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.

There are many regulations, written by a variety of actors, often in strange alliances. Safety, environmental, and disclosure regulations are often the culprits behind industry consolidation and oligopolization.

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

#76

Post by boplicity »

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #5

Thank you Cloudflare for making it impossible to read news, and yes I am a human.

Cloudflare is increasingly a problem in terms of blocking huge geographic regions, often without the website operators even being aware this is happening. All in the name of "security."

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

#77

Post by burnte »

Hasz wrote: post #20

I think this is a reaction to the incredibly locked down ecosystem that most of these mfgs are pushing. 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.

And there's also a place for OEMs who make the bare machines like this, and other people sell electronics to add!

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

#78

Post by iamcalledrob »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #47
sarchertech wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s part of the issue. But packing a tractor (or car) with electronics and computers does make it inherently harder to work on—even if it’s not locked down.

You need electronics and computers for cost-effective compliance with emissions requirements. Emissions limits have been one of the most positive government policies in my lifetime, saving millions of QALYs. 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…

Perhaps this is naive, but I would imagine that farm equipment is a rounding error in terms of global emissions. Compare the number of tractors to the number of trucks...

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

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

#79

Post by saalweachter »

greedo wrote: post #61
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…

Exactly! The old image of a guy on a Deere 4020 pulling an eight row implement is just unsustainable in today's agricultural system. Whether that system is sustainable is a different question.

Incidentally, the 4020 is like the tractor to me.

One of these days I'm going to buy one to restore, the way other men but the cars of their youth.

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

#80

Post by dilDDoS »

Hasz wrote: post #20

I think this is a reaction to the incredibly locked down ecosystem that most of these mfgs are pushing. 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.

Maybe not inherently bad, but clearly not inherently necessary or useful if they're already getting so many inquiries from farmers. Could just be that the tech doesn't offer enough meaningful value when the core mechanical functionality can be achieved at a lower price.
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