Depends on the what’s being grown. Sometimes you need monster HP.
Even with light work, electrical systems add to the weight leading to built in inefficiencies. I don’t know if we can move away from diesel at this point.
You need monster HP when you are trying to do a lot in a single pass, when I talk about the idea of autonomous+electric I am envisioning trading less work per pass for less HP and trading that off for more units and less labour.
Back in the bad old days you'd work 6 inches deep with a single-bottom plow behind a single draft horse! You can always break it up enough to get the HP down! ;)
It’s suitable for vegetable and small acreage farms. That’s the farm automation platform I am working on...we can swarm small Ag bots over connected small acreages. It’s the best use of robotics and automation tech in the field because every market farm or small acreage farm flips beds 2-3 times/year and have crops that have continuous multiple harvest windows.
If you're doing ground work with a tractor then weight is actually a good thing. The way it was always explained to me is weight determines what the tractor is capable of, horsepower is how quickly you could do it.
Even with light work, electrical systems add to the weight leading to built in inefficiencies. I don’t know if we can move away from diesel at this point.