Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

righthand

Good. The John Deere monopoly is wild, but if you talk to a farmer they say they can’t handle the repairs. Sure, John Deere gets to make more expensive and complex machines and convince their customers that it’s “the future”.

wepple

I love that the 5.9 lives on ursa-ag.com For (a little bit) more info

mattas

This is pretty cool! Kinda similar to what Slate is doing with cars.

itopaloglu83

Thank you Cloudflare for making it impossible to read news, and yes I am a human.

bombcar

Sounds like Gliders (truck) though those are usually to avoid emissions requirements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_%28automobiles%29#Glide...

cmrdporcupine

Wish they sold something in the compact utility segment. 40-60hpish. I'd love an affordable Canadian made tractor for property maintenance / smaller farms. (Though these days I've love something electric. I don't need long run time, I'm not doing row crops. Just market gardening and property maintenance stuff. All the electric stuff I see out there is aiming up at the high end and for autonomy / "smart" tractor stuff which I don't care about.)

Robdel12

This is the way if we can ensure manufacturing of the parts. It won’t catch on but it would be awesome to have “base” tractors that are mechanical and predictable. Then you slap on whatever software on top that helps (automation, etc). But they need to be decoupled imo.

Hasz

I think this is a reaction to the incredibly locked down ecosystem that most of these mfgs are pushing. However, the tech exists for a reason and is not inherently bad, the issue is the lock-in, the lack of choice and interoperability. IMO, there is plenty of space for an OEM who can play nice with others, offer an open (and vibrant ecosystem), and keep users coming back by choice, not by lock-in.

petervandijck

Ha - “Wilson saw the gap and drove a tractor through it.”

jcgrillo

Hell yeah 12V 5.9 Cummins. The one in my pickup has 250k hard miles on it, some blowby, and it starts right up at -10°F no problem.

Papazsazsa

"From whence this barbarous animus?" tweeted the technologist from the cauldron in which he boiled.

red-iron-pine

Danielle Smith never met a corporate shill she could say no to I predict 6 months before John Deer gets the Alberta UCP on the line and gets a law passed that bans "unsafe tractors" (or the like)

jtbr

Shows the attractiveness of “right to repair.” People want to own their stuff and not be forever beholden to the manufacturer.

maerF0x0

If the original article is of interest to you, this project might be too: https://www.opensourceecology.org/ https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Open_Source_Ecology

llmslave

This makes me think of the new toyotas, the rav4s, 4runner, and land cruiser. Through government regulations, they were forced to create smaller more fuel efficient engines. To get the same power, they overstrain them, and put huge turbos on the engines. The outcome is a strictly worse engine, that essentially uses the same fuel as older engines. The demand for older vehicles in certain segments is actually increasing

jmward01

I want this for cars but to keep the modern powertrain. So an EV without the tracking/touch screens, etc etc. Or an internal combustion engine car that is just simple and efficient (and again, no tracking). I'll take the low-tech but nice features like heated seats and power windows still thank you.

shrubble

A friend is an organic farmer in Saskatchewan who has been buying specifically older mechanical only tractors; after a heart attack that will require him to sell off his farm, he’s finding lots of potential buyers.

holoduke

What is it with American companies that eventually always try to sell crap and low moral products/services. As if the people are educated in luring people into traps to only benefit themselves.

bryanlarsen

Is part of the appeal due to the fact that being remanufactured engines they don't need modern emissions control, aka Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF)? Farmers hate DEF.

iJohnDoe

Good. There should be an option for a straightforward mechanical machine. This also has trickledown effect where hopefully regular town mechanics can fix things based on their historical knowledge of engines. Instead of not wanting to touch anything because of the all the electronics involved. Also, I know this is a strange parallel, but it feels similar to what Dell and HP did to their servers. They made the BIO so complicated that it takes 5-10 minutes for their severs to boot up. Using an older Dell server with a straightforward BIOS that boots up in 30 seconds feels awesome.