French startup Seederal has unveiled a powerful electric tractor right out of the gate, coming only a year after announcing its first funding round.
Seederal's 160-horsepower prototype isn't just an ordinary tractor with upgrades. "We had to rethink the tractor entirely," chief technical officer and co-founder Arthur Rivoal said, per Electrek. "We don't just replace a thermal engine with an electric motor."
The design removes the traditional tractor transmission, reducing weight so the unit can provide eight to 12 hours of work on a single charge — making it a "long-range" tractor.
According to Electrek, it has more than twice the pulling power of electric tractors from Monarch and Solectrac. That makes it a heavy-duty machine that's in the running for large industrial farms, not just mom-and-pop operations.
Overall, electric vehicles are cheaper to drive than gas-powered ones, saving owners money. Farmers will likely see the same benefits while exposing themselves to less toxic exhaust as electric tractor designs improve.
Meanwhile, having large farms switch from traditional fuel-powered tractors to electric ones could make an incredible difference in stopping the planet's runaway air pollution and resulting increases in temperature.
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Agriculture is responsible for 10% of the heat-trapping gases produced in the U.S. each year, according to the EPA. While not all of that is down to tractors, eliminating vehicles that run on diesel would make a noticeable difference.
Rivoal has crunched the numbers and said, "Electric tractors can reduce the carbon footprint by 15-20 tons a unit a year, the equivalent of the annual emissions of 17 cars traveling [7,456 miles] a year, the average for a car in France," per Electrek.
And Seederal isn't going to stop there. According to Electrek, the company is already at work on improvements and plans to enable users to drive its tractors all day from a single two-hour charge from a direct current fast charging station.
While the 160-horsepower model is not yet in production, it's a strong contender for the future electric tractor market, and we could soon see cleaner farming practices when it arrives.
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