America’s most common crop, corn, is grown on 82.5 million acres. That’s a whole lot of land, and there are a whole lot of diesel-burning tractors and farm implements out there doing all the harvesting, churning out harmful carbon emissions as they do.
Deciding that there had to be a better way, Ideanomics’ Solectrac brand began developing some seriously capable, zero-emission electric tractors to clean up the farming sector — that’s the plan.
There is a market for about 300,000 tractors per year. “70% of those are below 50HP, Solectrac has a 30HP and 40HP equivalent tractor already, with a 50 HP and 100 HP coming later.
The tractor accepts all category 1 and 2 implements on the rear 3-point hitch, 540 rpm PTO, with a lifting capacity of 2000 lb and the maintenance is significantly reduced because the electric motor has only one moving part compared to hundreds in a diesel engine.
Solectrac tractors offer maximum torque at 0 rpm and the best thing is that these tractors can be charged from the inverter that operates with the solar array.
They also have on board ‘exchangeable battery packs’ that can serve as a power source when the utility grid fails. For that the tractor would need to be equipped with an inverter that allows the electricity from the batteries to be used by the home. However, this would not work for a grid tie only system.
This is a PR Newswire Feed; edited by Clean-Future Team