Electric Tractors

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Can tractors go electric? Steve Heckeroth and his team at Solectrac think so. The Mendocino native was building electric cars in the early 90s and had the idea to apply the technology to tractors.

Heckeroth… “I realized the biggest problem I'd had with cars was the battery weight, and the battery weight could actually be an asset in a tractor. And so I switched my focus to tractors because I figured, food is, is actually more important than transportation.”

So, Steve went to work on designing a fully electric tractor.

Heckeroth.. “I designed a tractor patterned off to the tractors that were made in the fifties of the Allis Chalmers G, which had a mid hitch so that the farmers could see what they were doing when they were cultivating.”

Steve says the tractor is plenty powerful for small farm activities and the battery is easy to change and recharge.

Herckeroth.. “It takes less time to change a battery pack than it does an implement. You just drop off a used battery pack and put on a fresh one, and then put the use one on charge on a solar array. And by the time you're done with the fresh pack, the one that you put on the solar array is charged up and ready to go, so you can go continuously.”

Check it out at Solectrac.com.