this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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The only way it's possible is if the farmer can rely on it for a full day's work, and then charge it reliably over night for tomorrow with never needing to worry about it running out of power during the work. I'd say battery technology is pretty close, but I do really believe we'll need solid state batteries for it to scale.
Many farms in the US already have 3-phase 480v service for other equipment like irrigation arms (although the portable ones use generators). It's not unreasonable to assume that they could install level 2 or 3 chargers for EVs used on the property.
Yeah but tractors combines and harvesters operate in practically continuous operation during their associated phases. At least in big acreage crops like corn, soy, wheat, and rape.
Ok? The machines still need to be refueled at some point, it's not like they run forever without stopping.
The battery needs to be sized appropriately for the application to minimize the frequency of charging breaks, just as the fuel tanks are sized to minimize refueling breaks.
Yeah but you don't bring a combine back to the farm to refuel during harvest, you refuel it in the field.
And during harvest and planting, they kinda do run for ever. Harvest and planting are incredibly important times and you might only have a narrow window where the crop is ready to harvest and the weather permits harvesting. You can't run harvester in heavy rain. If the seed moisture isn't right you can't harvest. In farming you work on the crops schedule at the crops time.
You might only have a few weeks to get a crop in before it dries out too much or molds in the field if it rains at the wrong time, or any number if other things that can happen.
Swappable batteries have already been proposed elsewhere in this thread, why wouldn't that work for this?
Just the scale and the logistical complexity..