Another tractor manufacturer out of business?

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Not referring to construction equipment at all. I'm referring to the JD utility AG TRACTOR.

The Chinese have developed a battery powered bull dozer. Both battery powered snow blowers we sold last year were returned to us. Then there’s the battery powered zero turn we are doubtful of.
They say 5 hrs on a single charge.
Feel badly for the California landscapers. They’re gonna have to have power stations on their trucks with the Cali mandate for next year.

This massive Chinese electric bulldozer could wreck your world, emissions free!

Are you the kind of person that regularly has major demolition jobs that require a level of aggression and violence...

electrek.co

 

[rgr33]

I can’t help but feel that eventually, the hybrid and electric vehicles/ machines, will improve to the degree that we will all wonder why we ever used fossil fuel machines in the first place.

I liken it to my first battery powered tool, a Mikita 9.6v drill. It was ok, but not that effective for serious drilling.
compare that to the Milwaukee Fuel drills I use today, and the fact that I haven’t taken my corded drill out of the cabinet in years, and that is where I think the vehicular future is headed.

Doubters and boomers may never go willingly, and Offer up specific examples of why they don’t/won’t buy in, but just as we reach for our cordless yard tools and robotic vacuum cleaners, we will wonder how we ever got along in the old days.

 

[CliffordK]

Doesn’t sound good for Solectrac. Anyone have one of their machines?

Great clip, and well worth watching. It sounds a bit like the tractor was pushed to market too quickly by "engineers" that don't actually use tractors.

Has anyone seen this that the company is for sale??

Electric Tractor Manufacturer Solectrac Goes Up for Sale

Solectrac, a manufacturer of electric tractors based out of Santa Rosa, Calif., has been declared as “assets held for sale” by its parent company, Ideanomics.

www.agequipmentintelligence.com

willy

Yep, bumped into that when I found this thread. A lot is shown by their chart:

Obviously new companies have a lot of capital expenses, but those shouldn't show as a net loss. Nonetheless, it appears as if the more tractors they made, the more they lost. I.E. They needed to price the tractors twice as expensive, which would have taken a bite out of the market. Or, find ways to reduce the cost of batteries.

How much were the tractors new? Hmmm....

e25G Gear | Solectrac | Compact Electric Tractor

The 25 HP Category e25 is a versatile, 4WD tractor, great for hobby farms, golf courses, sports fields, equestrian centers, and municipalities.

solectrac.com

$29,249 basic tractor
$4,579 front loader
$1,499 industrial tires.

So, around $35K.

There are a few on Craigslist at the moment from about $25,000 to $32,699. I'm not seeing the larger ones on Craigslist.

It would be a fun little tractor,

The Chinese have developed a battery powered bull dozer. Both battery powered snow blowers we sold last year were returned to us. Then there’s the battery powered zero turn we are doubtful of.
They say 5 hrs on a single charge.
Feel badly for the California landscapers. They’re gonna have to have power stations on their trucks with the Cali mandate for next year.

This massive Chinese electric bulldozer could wreck your world, emissions free!

Are you the kind of person that regularly has major demolition jobs that require a level of aggression and violence...

electrek.co

SWEET!!!!

A little more expensive than my 977K, but an awful lot less expensive than a brand new CAT. I haven't had the opportunity to fill the fuel tank on the 977K yet.

The CATS are massively heavy. Perhaps replace some steel and iron with batteries.

It would depend on where those get used. Probably not the best for remote logging operations.

However, it would be good for use at a business that had a fixed yard. And, even for a commercial operation, either plan on bringing it for site prep for one day and finishing, or bringing power into a subdivision early to recharge equipment.

Anyway, if they can keep it under $100K, there will be a market. And, of course, if it comes close to the specs listed.

 

[ericm979]

Having been in a number of companies that failed, I can say that there are a lot of reasons why a company can go under besides flaws in the technology. Being undercapitalized is a common cause. Even super rich investors are cheap and want companies to succeed with minimal investment. Lack of or wrong marketing is another. Being too early to the market is another.

If Soletrac had $11M in revenue in 2022 and it was actual unit sales not funny money like licensing, they were clearly getting some traction in the market. Maybe the investors didn't realize how long it would take to become profitable. I don't know if they had any marketing at all. I never saw an ad for them. It seems like you could sell those all day to horse and dairy farms where the primary use is mucking out inside buildings and you don't want to be breathing exhaust fumes.

 

[3 Horse Ranch]

I can’t help but feel that eventually, the hybrid and electric vehicles/ machines, will improve to the degree that we will all wonder why we ever used fossil fuel machines in the first place.

I liken it to my first battery powered tool, a Mikita 9.6v drill. It was ok, but not that effective for serious drilling.
compare that to the Milwaukee Fuel drills I use today, and the fact that I haven’t taken my corded drill out of the cabinet in years, and that is where I think the vehicular future is headed.

Doubters and boomers may never go willingly, and Offer up specific examples of why they don’t/won’t buy in, but just as we reach for our cordless yard tools and robotic vacuum cleaners, we will wonder how we ever got along in the old days.

I have been labeled anti-EV, but I am not. What I am is anti-government-mandate EV. Ev's have a place where they work well 100% of the time, and that is city and suburb commuter and grocery getters.
My personal needs in vehicles is one car and one pickup that will do everything I ask them every time. I live in a very rural sparsely populated area. My county is the approximate size of the state of Connecticut with a population of 40K. everything is spread out. Major Medical facilities are 125 miles one way. Hay is close, but in drought years I've had to haul my hay from 200 miles away over mountain passes. No EV currently made will come close to fulfilling my needs.
However, I doubt that a day will ever come, short of the invention of "Mr. Fusion" that anything except a fossil fuel powered heavy duty farm pickup will be replaced by an EV.

 

[DarkBlack]

Great clip, and well worth watching. It sounds a bit like the tractor was pushed to market too quickly by "engineers" that don't actually use tractors.

Yep, bumped into that when I found this thread. A lot is shown by their chart:

Obviously new companies have a lot of capital expenses, but those shouldn't show as a net loss. Nonetheless, it appears as if the more tractors they made, the more they lost. I.E. They needed to price the tractors twice as expensive, which would have taken a bite out of the market. Or, find ways to reduce the cost of batteries.

How much were the tractors new? Hmmm....

e25G Gear | Solectrac | Compact Electric Tractor

The 25 HP Category e25 is a versatile, 4WD tractor, great for hobby farms, golf courses, sports fields, equestrian centers, and municipalities.

solectrac.com

$29,249 basic tractor
$4,579 front loader
$1,499 industrial tires.

So, around $35K.

There are a few on Craigslist at the moment from about $25,000 to $32,699. I'm not seeing the larger ones on Craigslist.

It would be a fun little tractor,



SWEET!!!!

A little more expensive than my 977K, but an awful lot less expensive than a brand new CAT. I haven't had the opportunity to fill the fuel tank on the 977K yet.

The CATS are massively heavy. Perhaps replace some steel and iron with batteries.

It would depend on where those get used. Probably not the best for remote logging operations.

However, it would be good for use at a business that had a fixed yard. And, even for a commercial operation, either plan on bringing it for site prep for one day and finishing, or bringing power into a subdivision early to recharge equipment.

Anyway, if they can keep it under $100K, there will be a market. And, of course, if it comes close to the specs listed.

$11 million in revenue is peanuts for a company like that. That’s just 314 tractors.
Pretty easy to imagine, fixed costs of land, building, utilities, payroll, insurance, all the components to build them etc… easily surpassing that number

 

[ptsg]

What tractors did Soletrac built? Because that e25G model they list on their website is just a rebranded Farmtrac FT25G.

Farmtrac is a brand owned by Escorts Group in India. Kubota showed interest in investing on Escorts group around 2020/2021. They even have a Kubota EK1-26 which is just a Farmtrac FT26 (diesel version). More or less at the same time, Kubota was also announcing some sort of the electric tractor.

I wonder if Soletrac going out of business is somehow related to this. Maybe Kubota refused to supply tractors for them? Just thinking out loud.

 

[WM75Guy]

Solectrac had a factory in California where they built their electric tractors. Farmtrac supplied the frame and transmission. I think Ideanomics, the parent company, bought Solectrac to cash in on the EV fad and their funding dried up. Ideanomics is headed towards bankruptcy as well.

This was from the Ideanomics earnings call on March 30, 2023.

"For some additional context here, Ideanomics has both local and federal government grant and loan applications submitted. These range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to the hundreds of millions of dollars, with the latter being something which will require a lot of focused activity to land favorably for Ideanomics. Our CFO, Stephen Johnston, will run through the financials shortly, and Robin will talk more of operations. But first, I want to share 3 examples of work we've done in 2022 to help position us to succeed as the commercial EV market begins to mature."

 

[CliffordK]

What tractors did Soletrac built? Because that e25G model they list on their website is just a rebranded Farmtrac FT25G.

I can't figure out where they're made. Solectrac seems to be a US company in California. But nothing indicates whether they make their own tractors, make licensed tractors, or are importing them mostly whole. Various government incentives might frown on importing and rebranding.

There appear to be 3 models:
e25H Hydrostatic
e25G Gear
e70N Electric Tractor

I'm not sure the advantage of a hydrostatic for an electric tractor that should naturally be continuously variable speed.

The larger e70N looks interesting, but is expensive. And, I am on a hill where I like tractors to be wide rather than narrow. I don't see any used e70N tractors, and perhaps they never made it to market.

An under powered, or too poor of speed for the PTO sounds like a major problem.

 

[CliffordK]

Solectrac had a factory in California where they built their electric tractors. Farmtrac supplied the frame and transmission. I think Ideanomics, the parent company, bought Solectrac to cash in on the EV fad and their funding dried up. Ideanomics is headed towards bankruptcy as well.

This was from the Ideanomics earnings call on March 30, 2023.

"For some additional context here, Ideanomics has both local and federal government grant and loan applications submitted. These range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to the hundreds of millions of dollars, with the latter being something which will require a lot of focused activity to land favorably for Ideanomics. Our CFO, Stephen Johnston, will run through the financials shortly, and Robin will talk more of operations. But first, I want to share 3 examples of work we've done in 2022 to help position us to succeed as the commercial EV market begins to mature."

Thanks,

So a large facility that they talked about 6 months before the company seemed to collapse.

They seem to show a large warehouse, but no specific assembly line, or subcomponent routing. Nor do they seem to be showing any production beyond basic assembly.