Surely the weight of a tractor pales in comparison to the person sitting inside? The heavy weight is for that big engine with a lot of torque. Can a lighter weight tractor pull its load?
I’d assume all the functionality inside the cab, the space needed, seat, controls, windscreen, AC inside the cabin, etc, add up to quite a bit of weight. If you went truly driverless without a cabin you could save a ton of weight.
Maybe a ton at the most - but the tractor weights far more than a ton. Actually more weight is a good thing in tractors because that allows for more traction.
What you could achieve with a driverless tractor is using two smaller ones instead of one big one. Since the driver's effective wage leaves the cost equation, the number of tractors can potentially be much larger.
Come to think of it, this might also benefit small landholders eventually by reducing the minimum amount of land required to fund a single tractor.
I can't figure out how to link, but if you search me you will see elsewhere that I explained that bigger is better for the soil.
Most small landholders should sell and move to the city. You need a fair amount of size to make a decent living selling something cheap. Though my biggest worry is the medium sized farmers - wasting $10/acre in extra chemicals when you have 600 acres is only $6000 - you probably won't even notice it and in any case not wasting it costs investment too. When you have 6000 acres though that $10 is a larger number and you can afford to put a lot of money in better whatever to not waste it.
Kirby64|6 months ago
bluGill|6 months ago
bluedino|6 months ago
scythe|6 months ago
Come to think of it, this might also benefit small landholders eventually by reducing the minimum amount of land required to fund a single tractor.
bluGill|6 months ago
Most small landholders should sell and move to the city. You need a fair amount of size to make a decent living selling something cheap. Though my biggest worry is the medium sized farmers - wasting $10/acre in extra chemicals when you have 600 acres is only $6000 - you probably won't even notice it and in any case not wasting it costs investment too. When you have 6000 acres though that $10 is a larger number and you can afford to put a lot of money in better whatever to not waste it.