Electric vehicles on the farm? Electric tractors would be much more expensive and heavier than current models

Graphic by Joelle Orem, Successful Farming

Taking a ride out West, in my EVS, might be a nice little rhyme, but it's a hard sell. "There is one place in America where electric vehicles are glaringly absent — the back 40. Today, electric tractors and other farming equipment are hard to find on showroom floors, let alone in the field," reports Steve Cubbage of Farm Journal. Even though seven states have "banned the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. . . . The hurdles EVs must clear to be viable on the farm are incredibly high from an engineering and an economic standpoint." 

Building an electric tractor means adding weight, and that's a problem. "John Deere's website shows its 8R tractor has a starting base weight of 25,200 lbs. Current engineering assessments say an all-electric version would weigh more than twice as much," Cubbage writes. "Soil compaction already weighs heavily on how modern farm equipment is designed. Increasing the weight and mass of such machines may end up creating more, not fewer, emissions. . . .Compacted soil releases greenhouse gasses such as methane and nitrous oxide, which are much more potent than a tractor's exhaust."

Electric tractors are limited by battery life, and many areas with significant farmland lack charging stations. "The all-electric tractors slated to come to market can only work four to eight hours per charge," Cubbage reports. "Heavy-duty agricultural vehicles will require multiple heavy-duty superchargers — an expensive and potentially unrealistic endeavor."

If an electric Quadtrac tractor existed, it would cost
around $650,000. (Quadtrac photo)

Should all those hurdles be overcome, the overall price for an EV tractor may prove untenable to farmers. "Low-horsepower tractors are approximately 30% more expensive than their diesel-powered equivalents. That may work on an all-electric garden tractor but not a half-million dollar Quadtrac," Cubbage explains. "But unlike with cars, there's no federal program to ease the burden of an electric tractor. If bureaucrats and consumers really want to turn Old MacDonald's farm all-electric, then they better put their money where their mouth is."