[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.

[MisterTea]

> However, the tech exists for a reason and is not inherently bad, the issue is the lock-in, the lack of choice and interoperability.

These low-tech tractors could become a hot bed for open source experimentation. Nothing stopping someone from sticking a tablet on the dash. You could run GPS harvesting optimization software or some webthing locally. Could be cloud or clever DiY farmers could run their farm off a local instance on a small machine using a WiFi AP atop the barn or whatever.

[dylan604]

This was my take as well. How many 3rd parties might be able to bring on upgrades/modifications to a "dumb" tractor to make it smart vs only being able to buy a "smart" tractor from one vendor and be forced into it's rules/restrictions/prices

[tempest_]

Plenty of options for putting auto steer on a dumb tractor already exist.

[kube-system]

Cheap ones too -- aliexpress has them.

But there's more to agtech than driving a tractor around, a lot of what these big integrated systems do (at the high end) is very data driven -- determining where and how to plant, irrigate, fertilize, etc. There's a lot of integration work beyond just making the tractor drive.

[bborud]

35 years in the tech industry has taught me one thing: incumbents that have been around for a long time are almost always more clueless and more full of shit than you think, what they do isn't as hard as they claim and you can probably do better given a fraction of the time they spent just because you don't have legacy systems to worry about and because technology and tooling has moved on.

Incumbents thrive on the myths about what they do being hard and impossible to replicate.

Yes, it is a lot of work to replace what you can get off the shelf today. But it isn't like the basic tech itself is all that hard to replicate step by step if you accept that it takes time and the first N development stages will give you something that isn't as feature rich and polished. And if one makes it open source, interoperability will be easier to do something about.

Perhaps some of the analysis tools/services you can buy today will be hard to replicate, but I doubt they are that hard to replicate. And it is worth having slightly suboptimal results for a couple of seasons than being on the receiving end of a hostage-situation.

But yes, it is certainly a huge effort to get what you actually need.

[kube-system]

The Pareto principle applies. For highly complex systems it’s easy to build most of what the incumbents have. It’s the last 20% where it is hard to catch up just because the incumbents have decades of a head start and have the momentum. And even more so here because it’s not just software. It’s very science and hardware heavy.

For farming, it’s even more tough because the market has a really uneven distribution. Usually the best place to tackle huge incumbents is in the midmarket. They’re big enough to need your automation, but they’re small enough to take a risk to save some money, and the features you haven’t built yet aren’t blockers for them.

But there’s basically no midmarket farming, all farms are pretty much either really big or really small.

[dylan604]

Another clue into this is how hard they litigate. Can't innovate, litigate is a phrase for a reason

[MisterTea]

> But there's more to agtech than driving a tractor around, a lot of what these big integrated systems do (at the high end) is very data driven -- determining where and how to plant, irrigate, fertilize, etc.

How difficult is this to implement outside of big ag-tech? I feel that a community of experienced farmers and programmers (or programmer-farmers) could tackle this.

[tempest_]

It really depends.

The bigger agcorps have tones of integration.

The machine, from tractor to combine and everything in between often feeds data together to produce a holistic understanding.

Things like - How much fuel was used - Where your tractors and sprayers drove - Soil samples and content - How and where every bit of chemical and fertilizer was applied - What weather hit your field - How much and and the moisture content of every bit of the field you harvested

It goes on an on.

[lallysingh]

I think this has all suddenly shifted with high-quality programming AIs available. How difficult is this to implement with Claude?

[jfengel]

What kind of sensors do those cheap kits come with?

A tractor is a big thing to have rolling around unsupervised. I would want a lot of safeguards. Blindly going from one GPS point to another sounds like a nightmare.

[kube-system]

The cheapie aliexpress specials simply drive the line they're programmed to drive. They have GPS and a gyro to account for the slope of the land. You're supposed to stay in the tractor while they're operating as a safety... but this doesn't always happen in some parts of the world.

[defrost]

Here you go, local grain farmer (4,500 hectares, barley, grains) reviews a fully automated driverless swarm bot in boom spray configuration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljEKN7CsjnM

[dylan604]

Right, but that has nothing to do with a vendor making a dumb tractor. Why do we need to dismissively move the conversation from TFA. The data driven approach is made up of several parts, and we're looking at a specific part

[kube-system]

Making a dumb tractor for the use-case of dumb tractor is obviously a winning idea.

I just don't think you're going to effectively compete with big agtech by putting a bunch of parts in a box, shaking it, and hoping you end up with a beautifully integrated solution. Integration hell is the reason big commercial firms dominate when it comes to large integrated systems.

[andrew_lettuce]

Is suspect most farmers would prefer the diy add-on version of these than the single manufacturer integrated one. A modern smartphone and stay of I/o sensors send like it could do pretty much the entire job

[pcblues]

The kid? :)

[dylan604]

I had to scroll back up to see what this reply was to, to get the full chuckle and yup, I was told frequently by my male parental unit that the top two reasons for having kids was chores and tax deductions. But there's a reason farm families leaned on the large side. The more hands you had helping the less hard things could be while never being easy

[mynameisash]

Years ago, there was a TED Talk[0] from the guy that started Open Source Ecology[1]. The TED Talk was really cool, but I haven't really followed what they did. It sounded promising to have open-source technology for use in this space.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S63Cy64p2lQ

[1] https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Main_Page

[worldsayshi]

I absolutely love this vision. He's still working towards the goal. It seems that his vision has problems scaling up though. He seems to mostly still drive this himself.

[PunchyHamster]

They have no driving electronics, electronic throttle, ECU controlled injection etc, so you are limited, you can't for example easily make it go constant set speed, because the throttle isn't electronic.

It went a bit too far, optimum would be modern enough to have drive by wire but with open ECU and documentation

[dghlsakjg]

You can still control a completely mechanical engine to work with set speeds. There are mechanical governors that can do this, or you can get an electronic component that moves the throttle for you. Fixed speed engines with variable load are much older than the transistor.

It is no harder than doing it with an ECU, except that you need to install a servo or speed governor with hand tools, instead of fiddling with ECU code.

[PunchyHamster]

It is far easier for 3rd party stuff to target say open bus protocol rather than a servo + speed sensor pair.

[dghlsakjg]

From a software perspective it’s the same. The software doesn’t care if it is telling a servo to rotate or an ECU to increase speed. Both systems need an external speed sensor feeding in. The only extra on the mechanical engine is adding a generic servo.

Both systems can use an open bus protocol. The mechanical system resists proprietary rent seeking as an added bonus.

We’re commenting on an article about farmers willing to pay for tractors with rebuilt all mechanical engines when the exact same tractor could be built with a new computer controlled one. That choice was intentional.

[jcgrillo]

It has a governor.. The P pump 12 valves (and many other multi-application diesels) come with either one of two different governors, an automotive one which has a high idle and low idle, but unrestricted fueling in between. This is what you want in a car or truck where you're controlling road speed with your foot. There's also the "industrial" governor that essentially maps lever input linearly to engine RPM, and endeavors to maintain its set RPM independent of load. This is the kind you find in tractors, generators, boats, etc.

These governors are basically mechanical analog computers which use the inertia of flyweights, springs, and some very clever linkages to do their thing.

[PunchyHamster]

I know, I used tractor like this. Governor only keeps RPM, not the air-fuel ratio and a bunch of other emission and fuel usage related stuff.

And it's a bit easier to make 3rd party addons when you just have some open bus standard, not "mount that servo on a gas pedal"

[jcgrillo]

There's a device called an "aneroid compensator" that sits on top of the governor and is used to maintain a fueling profile for a specific density altitude (e.g. limit fuel at higher altitudes on naturally aspirated engines or off-boost on turbocharged engines). This effectively maintains AFR, although it is not a closed loop system. For closed loop control you need to measure AFR directly in the exhaust and compensate, which means you need (at least, a common rail system that can time injection events independently from the valve train would be even better) an electronically governed injection pump. There's no good way to do this with some 3rd party add-on. You'd be much better off just using an electronically governed Bosch injection pump (like those found on 24 valve Cummins or 1998-1999 Mercedes OM606 turbodiesels). But then you incur the encumbrance of the ECU and all the bad corporate behavior that comes along for the ride.

Also note that maintaining a particular AFR in a diesel is kind of a non goal, at least from the perspective of engine performance. With the older style, simple injection systems that are user serviceable you only get one pulse per cycle. So you can't really change AFR without compromising torque output. For a tractor, when I set the lever all the way forward I (the operator) expect it to maintain revs sufficient to maintain 540rpm at the PTO unless it is not able to do so (fueling maxed out under load). Putting more load necessarily means more fuel in for a given RPM, ergo higher AFR. Note that turbocharging changes this equation a little.

[spockz]

There are already open source auto pilot and cruise control implementations for cars. (Not all cars are supported obviously!) so to have this in place for tractors off the road seems very doable.

Edit: specifically thinking of https://comma.ai/

[Jbird2k]

Well open source AutoSteer exists it has a lot of features like rate control built in to it. The system is called AgOpenGPS it’s very popular for retrofitting older equipment with modern technology.

[bborud]

I would be surprised if this doesn't exist already in some nascent form?

This is an area where you would probably need entire ecosystem of systems that are onboard tractors, but also for the various implements you hook up to it to monitor sowing, fertilizing, spraying etc. Including backend systems that you can either self-host or subscribe to some service that doesn't have awful terms.

It shouldn't take immense amount of capital to make some real progress towards something that can make a difference.

[infecto]

My bet would be there will be a niche for these tractors at hobby farms but the reality is outside of niche goods and hobby farms, farming is about scale and the machines that companies like JD sell help a lot. Sure the tech is locked down but at the scale those players are running at it’s baked into the service contract to minimize downtime.

[MandieD]

A niche called Mennonites in general and in particular, Amish in communities that are ok with motors, but not with fancy, fragile electronics.

[infecto]

Right those are niches like hobby farms. There is a market but it has a pretty distinct shape. The broader point was a machine like this is not changing farming.

[andrew_lettuce]

The beauty here is even beyond experimentation the tech will change repeatedly over the life of the equipment, and you can cheaply adapt to that. There is very little advantage to the modern tractors, beyond luxuries and the finish of a self contained package. Farmers rarely ime prioritize either of these

[laughing_man]

With high end tractors you can have them drive themselves on the rows based on a GPS map that was created when you planted. That's going to be difficult to retrofit.

[stackskipton]

OEM can change their mind at any moment and there is always going to be an MBA rubbing their hands together thinking about all the money that can be made.

This needs to be solved at government level with right to repair laws and requirement for open standards instead of believing in magic of "free market".

[post-it]

Now is especially a good time for Canada to do it. Cory Doctorow had a fantastic CBC interview about this. Scrapping anti-tampering protections would harm anti-Canadian tech companies while also building rapport with American farmers who would be able to use Canadian software on their tractors.

[throwaway27448]

Something tells me that the best tractor software would be free, not nationalized.

[post-it]

Yes, free, and created in Canada by developers not burdened by American red tape.

[throwaway27448]

I have a hard time imagining that canada has expertise in tractor software. Let's rein our nationalist tendencies in to something that approaches common sense

[dghlsakjg]

Canada has the highest percentage of people with higher education. There's no qualifier for that sentence. Canada is the only country on earth where a majority of people over 25 have tertiary education.

It also has a massive agricultural sector. You know how Canada is known as an oil and gas powerhouse? Agriculture is more than double the size of o+g in Canada.

I think the most well educated country on earth, with a massive, highly automated, agricultural sector might be able to reason about tractor software.

[realo]

Hum... i can understand your throwaway status.

You are certainly aware that we , in Canada, have expertise in software that is quite a bit more advanced than tractor software.

[post-it]

Do you think we live in fucking igloos bud?

[dpc050505]

I jailbreaked my Canadarm to prune my weed plants using a LLM.

[nickff]

Ever-more-restrictive government regulations are what allows these OEMs to ‘leverage’ their market power this way. I am not sure that a new regulation can solve it, as these sorts of mandates don’t seem to have worked in any other market.

[jmward01]

The argument isn't 'more' regulations or 'less' regulations, it is the right regulations. The problem is that big companies slowly allow regulations that don't hurt them but do block competition by aggressively fighting regulations that help the startup (their competition) or help the consumer in ways that make them less money. It isn't hard to be evil and create regulatory capture. You don't actually have to be active in crafting regulation, just be active in blocking the right regulation. General statements that are 'against regulation' play into big companies making things worse.

[cucumber3732842]

These big companies absolutely allow regulations that "hurt" them. Deere doesn't want to deal with farmers who are pissed off that emissions stuff results in a service call at a bad time and can't be overridden, or obnoxious safety stuff that make products less useful outside of their "textbook" application, or something that forces them to expensively certify their product is XYZ or something.

Buuuuut, the cost of implementing that stuff hurts the competition way more, so Deere and friends don't really fight it.

They're trading absolute market size for stronger control over market share. Less people are going to buy their products at the margin if the products are made worse. But those that do will buy it from them, so more profit.

[pocksuppet]

Those are load-bearing quotation marks: you're saying the regulation doesn't hurt them, only "hurts" them. If the regulation hurt them, they wouldn't allow it.

[brigandish]

You're proposing a binary version of "hurt", they are proposing a spectrum. If a regulation hurts company A but it will survive whereas company B, A's main and essentially only competitor stopping A from a monopoly, will go out of business from that regulation, you know that company A won't fight it.

[post-it]

You're right, the solution is getting rid of swathes of intellectual property legislation, not adding more.

[kube-system]

That's a double edged sword. Investors demand a return regardless of what IP law is. They'll invest in the companies that find some way to protect their investment -- NDAs, stronger technical protections, services-models, etc.

[QuantumFunnel]

Maybe it's time the economy shifts from having to prioritize the investors for everything

[kube-system]

You don't have to prioritize them. You can choose to encourage the rich to hoard their money elsewhere. But there are consequences to every policy decision.

[estimator7292]

Remember that those regulations are written by the OEMs they benefit and whom bribe legislators to pass those regulations.

Any argument made without acknowledging this is purely in bad faith. The problem is not regulation that benefits OEMs. The problem is that you can simply purchase regulations that benefit you.

[nickff]

There are many regulations, written by a variety of actors, often in strange alliances. Safety, environmental, and disclosure regulations are often the culprits behind industry consolidation and oligopolization.

[uticus]

> instead of believing in magic of "free market"

It looks like magic because it works like magic. Surprisingly it is also possible to believe in the magic of "government intervention" though it looks less like magic and more like unintended consequences.

[throwaway173738]

Doing nothing and letting the market do whatever is also full of unintended consequences. Your argument is like letting your yard go to weed and accumulate a bunch of knotweed and himalayan blackberry. Yeah you can argue that you didn’t do anything to create that situation but at the end of the day you’re still responsible for it.

[Eisenstein]

The thing is that not doing anything is still a policy decision. Unless you want to go full bore libertarian there will always be regulation. By saying that the market is magic and the government is intervention, then you ignore all of the intervention exists already and just saying you are fine with it.

[narcraft]

There's no magic necessary. TFA highlights the exact mechanism by which markets can fill a gap or need via entrepreneurship when incumbents fail to deliver what customers want. It's not guaranteed to happen or work in every case, but there's money to be made by giving people what they actually want.

[stackskipton]

A lot of electronics is useful, it can reduce fuel use or help with more accurate driving.

Farmers are just pissed they lose the ability to repair the vehicle easily or get stuck with monthly subscription because tractor company has changed the terms and you are praying they don't change it further.

[salawat]

It's almost as if freedom only exists for those with the money to hire lawyers to make it happen. Farmers are basically screwed in that their location at the bottom foundation level of society really ties their hands in what they can get away with before things start getting tumultuous. Yet get a few factories under your belt and enshittify, and suddenly it's all "your way or the highway". Odd that.

[cdot2]

A modern John Deere tractor with a robust right-to-repair would still be a pain to do maintenance on. A big part of the reason people want old tractors is because they don't have these additional computer controlled systems which break and require time and effort to fix.

[pocksuppet]

It would be nice if this could happen more smoothly and rapidly, without some random people having to become experts in tractors from the ground up, and that's what regulations could help with. Say, if it was legal to copy from the best.

[ericjmorey]

But the company in the article isn't filling the gap. Farm owners want the technology. They don't want to be held hostage over the technology when it needs maintenance, repair, or adaptation after the initial sale.

[cineticdaffodil]

Honestly do you even need to build a lowtech alternative? Just anounce you will and retire on cartel kickbacks to slow it down?

[infogulch]

Government regulations weren't necessary for Framework to make the most open laptop product line in history which includes a the 'Pro' 13" laptop chassis which is both backwards and forwards compatible with components that were sold 5 years ago on day 1.

[beloch]

"Downtime — the thing that actually costs a farmer money during planting or harvest — shrinks dramatically when you don’t need a factory technician with a laptop to diagnose a fuel delivery problem."

---------------

Tractors aren't cars. It isn't merely inconvenient if they are unavailable at crucial times, so ease of repair is critical. Farmers have always done as much of their own maintenance as possible. John Deere has spent a lot of time taking away the reliability and ease of repair that farmers need in order to give them "advanced" features they don't need.

Farmers who want advanced capabilities might now look to build them on top of no-tech tractors with open-source solutions rather than trusting John Deere again. That way, if the "would be nice" tech has problems they can rip it off and get the harvest in without it.

[9rx]

> Farmers have always done as much of their own maintenance as possible.

Well, sure. Maintenance is an off-season job. Its that or sit on the couch watching TV, so you may as well be in the shop getting equipment ready. Even if it takes you longer than an experienced tech, does it really matter? Not really. The winters are long.

Repairs are a different story. When things break, you need it fixed now. Wasting a day trying to figure out how to separate complex, seized parts from each other isn't time you have. You're going to be hiring a mechanic who has done it a million times before.

Of course, more important than who does the work is part availability. Having the human capacity to get something fixed means nothing if you cannot also get the parts you need. I've certainly been caught more than once needing to wait a week on a part, which is not a fun place to be. And this is where John Deere has focused their business: Doing more to keep parts available near to where the farmers are, so that you can get parts exactly when you need them. This is, above all else, why John Deere is the market leader.

> Farmers who want advanced capabilities might now look to build them on top of no-tech tractors with open-source solutions

I have been going down this road and am starting to regret it a bit. The saving grace is that I have found enjoyment in building a system of my own. But if I found it to be a chore, at this point I'd have deep remorse that I didn't just pay someone like John Deere for a fully delivered, highly polished solution. I know the HN crowd tends towards the DIY, but, having actual experience here, I don't see this happening outside of the small subset of farmers who find fun in it. It is a decent hobby for those so inclined, but from a purely commercial perspective the time and effort can be better put to use elsewhere.

[Iolaum]

If you maintain your stuff you know enough to fix some things and you know when you can't and need to call a mechanic (or a friend who knows more and can do it).

[9rx]

You can fix things, but can you really justify the time to do when you need an operational machine?

1. No matter how great of a shade tree mechanic you are, you will never be able to fix it faster than someone who does it every day. They have found all the little tricks and quirks about your machine that your casual maintenance will never uncover.

2. While large farms with full-time mechanics on staff have been known to make deals to warehouse parts in their own shop on consignment, much more realistically for any kind of normal farm you are going to have to drive to the dealership to get the parts you need. Whereas the dealership tech can bring the parts to you. Meaning that you have to travel twice as far, taking twice as long, to get the parts back to your equipment than if you call a mechanic.

The things that are likely to fail under use where there has been proper maintenance tend to be the things that are unpredictable and catastrophic, at very least requiring parts, and most likely requiring advanced knowhow. And at that point, the dealership tech is going to be faster at getting you back up and running, even if you could theoretically pull it off yourself. So, realistically, there isn't much of a compelling case for doing your own repairs when time is of the essence.

Farmers are often willing to accept more downtime to do it themselves out of pride, though. I admittedly often fall victim to that myself, so I get it. But it’s clear that the farmers who are serious about farming as a business aren’t dinking around trying to fix things themselves. It is not economically prudent to do so. Granted, not all farmers farm for business sake. For many it’s more of a hobby or lifestyle and wanting to be a part-time mechanic can play into that.

[ianm218]

This is probably not this companies vision but it does seem interesting if companies sell "dumb" machines and then consumers can BYO electronics. Like an agricultural version of comma.ai.

Not sure how much appetite there is for that but half price + 5 grand in off the shelf electronics seems like something margin sensitive farmers would do.

[Waterluvian]

Reminds me of how I don’t ever want an infotainment system in my car. I want the peripherals: a touch screen and speakers. I’ll supply my own phone to do the rest.

[j45]

Same for Smart TVs.

Always better short and long term to bring and maintain your own smarts.

[-warren]

I disagree. While those are great points, I don't think that's the primary reason -- and maybe we're actually saying the same thing.

This tractor will last 50 years (and maybe more). Your grandchildren will be able to still use it. That longevity is the primary reason farmers would be super interested in this.

Some jobs (like mucking a barn for example) don't require a high-tech tractor. Sometimes you just need a workhorse that you can trust will start, run and do the job. Every single time. I still see farmers running old minneapolis-moline tractors from 100 years ago!

[tonyarkles]

My in-laws use a Farm-all H around the yard for a lot of tasks. I don’t know what year it was made, but it looks like they were made from 1939-1954. It just… runs. We basically just do oil changes on it.

[whizzter]

I think going bare-metal at cut-rate might've been the only way to actually kick-start that. F.ex. ECU's make things more optimal so buyers will be paying extra for fuel in a bad economy, but the lock-down was worse when it was causing downtime.

But tech in general is perhaps in a growing-up phase, we had Arduinos and Raspberry PI's filling a similar need (computer to electronics being needlessly complicated) that was initially filled from the low-end, but now we have faster SBC's and stuff like Framework laptop's that is expanding the range of options for repariable/replaceable/hackable parts up to the high end today and farming equipment is probably destined to get a similar range of options.

An interesting note here is, will cars also start getting a range of more hackable options, mechanics are ingenious already but it's still very much hacks without manufacturer support, but a new manufacturer providing a low-cost base could very well pop up and grow quickly if they establish an ecosystem.

[sarchertech]

That’s part of the issue. But packing a tractor (or car) with electronics and computers does make it inherently harder to work on—even if it’s not locked down.

[AlotOfReading]

You need electronics and computers for cost-effective compliance with emissions requirements. Emissions limits have been one of the most positive government policies in my lifetime, saving millions of QALYs.

There's lots of other electronics in most modern vehicles, but the public manufacturer rationales for electronic lockdowns almost always point back to emissions concerns because they're so defensible. How do you separate them?

[iamcalledrob]

Perhaps this is naive, but I would imagine that farm equipment is a rounding error in terms of global emissions. Compare the number of tractors to the number of trucks...

I would have expected policy to be pragmatic here, with (relatively) relaxed emissions requirements, since an affordable and reliable food supply is in the national interest? Sounds like that's not the case

[AlotOfReading]

Emissions regimes are complicated, but US tractors fall into the much less restrictive off-road category. As a result, they're a disproportionately significant contributor to things like NOx. A long time ago the off-road category was >20%, and I'm sure that percentage has only grown as regulations have forced emissions reductions in onroad vehicles.

[joecool1029]

> but US tractors fall into the much less restrictive off-road category.

Sometimes. Above 26HP tractors do have to have emissions controls like diesel particulate filters now. Below that they don't.

[carefree-bob]

The vast majority of offroad equipment is not farm equipment but operates in urban environments. As NOx is an air pollution concern, there should be different regimes for rural areas versus urban areas. Construction equipment operating in urban areas is different from a tractor on a farm.

[cout]

Compare the number of tractors to the number of gas-powered lawnmowers. Which do you think gets better emissions?

[iamcalledrob]

I'd imagine it depends what kind of emissions you're measuring? Are we talking air quality or climate change?

Two stroke engines are pretty terrible in terms of unburned hydrocarbons and are disgusting for local air quality, which is why I'm glad they're being phased out in many areas.

I'd expect these tractors with I6 diesel engines to run pretty efficiently. I'd bet that the CO2 emissions from tractors are tiny in comparison from the emissions from trucks, fertiliser, and transporting the food.

[cout]

Lawnmowers are usually four-stroke, with two-stroke engines reserved for lighter tools like string trimmers and chainsaws.

I would still guess that lawnmowers produce more emissions overall, given that there are so many more mowers than tractors. But they get used less often than tractors, so who knows? Either way, I agree with your thinking process, that the most economical way to reduce overall emissions is to focus on what are actually producing the bulk of emissions.

I don't know how much better cars and trucks can get, and for mowers maybe electric is the answer. Mine is gas-powered, and I know it runs rich. I would love to come inside after mowing and not smell like fuel, so I'm in favor of better emissions controls on mowers.

[carefree-bob]

These are regulations, not laws, and can be changed fairly easily. E.g the EPA recently changed the rules requiring NOx sensors and power downs, which were the most failure prone components of the system, while still mandating the actual equipment that scrubs NOx.

There's no particular reason why a mechanical device needs computers for emissions, as the emissions removing components can still be attached and managed via simpler means. All emissions removing components are effectively physical devices, whether you are talking about carbon filters or PCV valves or particulate filters or the urea fluids that are added to the fuel. None of them requires complex software in order to function. There is no reason why you need to buy an official John Deere branded emissions component that is software locked to tractor and costs 10x the price of third party components that do the same thing.

Also, there is a large room to maneuver between "I want a sensor with some circuitry in it" and "the entire tractor is a proprietary computer with locked down parts". The right to repair movement is not about removing tech, but removing unnecessary proprietary tech that is designed to prevent owners of devices from repairing those devices themselves or with third party components.

[PunchyHamster]

defeat devices aren't even complicated (they just fake the sensor data to ECU to get what owner needs). Locking down is pointless. Most people are not tuning their cars.

IF we wanted to do it properly, I'd imagine we'd have zero mandatory locks on ECU, just a little closed down black box with sensor installed in relatively tamper-proof way (of course there will always be one, the target is for 90% of people to not bother), logging away and maybe sending check engine light if it detects wrong AFR for too long.

Then you just check that on yearly MOT + any signs of tampering. Then owner is free to tune the engine as they want, provided the exhaust is still within the norms for most of the time.

[jcgrillo]

What would you be accomplishing by trying to control end user behavior like that? As a manufacturer, there are certain standards your machine must meet when it leaves your factory. After that, a whole separate set of standards applies to users--e.g. EPA rules about emissions equipment tampering. As a manufacturer, though, you don't need to attempt enforcement. Leave that to the government, it's their job. Locked down, proprietary hardware and software doesn't ultimately achieve enforcement, it just makes tampering more difficult at the cost of serviceability. This is a dumb trade.

[PunchyHamster]

It's to contain the regulation into little box that controls the emission, rather than span it to entire system making it harder to repair. Then the EPA can have its "proof" the vehicle emissions are fine without compromising entire system for repairs.

[jcgrillo]

I think you're asking for something magical, like when politicians go on TV and demand safe cryptosystems with government backdoors. Any time you try to do engineering work to hinder users from using devices they own it's a really bad time. That's the purview of law enforcement, not engineering.

[jcgrillo]

> How do you separate them?

Mandate common interfaces and open hardware. I shouldn't have to buy a $10k dongle to sniff codes. I certainly shouldn't have to buy a different one for each manufacturer.

[fragmede]

The legislation has to be robust. No dice if the dongle is generic and $20 like OBD2 in cars, but that on top of that there's a per-manufacturer set of codes that only licensed dealers have access to the software to read those special codes.

[cout]

The situation today is at least better than it used to be before OBDII. I much prefer using a scanner to get codes then having to count flashing lights. And back then you'd still have to pay a lot for the manufacturer's code reader. The only advantage was the ROM was small enough to disassemble and reflash with new features. I would not want to do that on a car made in 2026.

[bluGill]

Most of the codes on a large tractor are j1939. You still want the manufacture database because it often says 'x sensor voltage out of range - check the wiring harness in some not obvious location'

[cout]

How do you define "electronics" and "computers"? Is a general-purpose computer running Java in the same category as a microcontroller running a tight loop with lookup tables for fuel and spark?

[pocksuppet]

The problem: Once you have a microcontroller running a tight loop with lookup tables for fuel and spark, it's very tempting to make it run a tight loop with lookup tables for fuel, spark, and time since license renewal - and there's no outward difference between the two microcontrollers until one of them stops working. This is where regulations can help: if a manufacturer is afraid of a zillion dollar fine, they won't do that, even if the chance of getting caught is low.

[cout]

While I agree in principle, we went two or more decades with cars powered by microcontrollers, and I don't recall any manufacturers trying to charge for licenses until more recently. There is something fundamentally different about the economy we are now in, I suspect.

[pocksuppet]

I think the difference is that in the past, companies expected to be punished for obviously evil behavior, but now, they know they can go very far. Toyota got punished for stuck accelerators. Would they get punished for the same thing today? Tesla had stuck accelerators and we all forgot about it.

They're still pushing the boundary today. The Ring Superbowl ad where they announced they're watching you (but they said "your dog") 24/7 apparently got a lot of people to quit Ring, and you know they're crunching the numbers to see if the retention rate is worth the extra surveillance collection.

[jcgrillo]

They charge for the diagnostic systems. Bigly. For example, Mercedes-Benz's Star Diagnostic System (SDS) is necessary for a variety of repairs and diagnostic procedures. There are varying degrees of workarounds and alternatives but none of them work quite right, or for every model/year/variant. It's not just the embedded system, it's also the interface to it. That's where the really ugly rent seeking crops up. And that's precisely why a tractor with no computers is attractive--not because the embedded software might try to ransom itself (although that's a reasonable fear) but because some horrible rent seeking corporate functionary will do their utmost to cheat you (or your mechanic) out of as much money as possible when it comes time to do any maintenance or diagnostic testing. No computers means that little bastard can fuck right off.

[pocksuppet]

I still don't understand what was downvotable about this comment.

[jcgrillo]

Exactly. Electronically controlled unit injectors are expensive--like 10x the price of mechanical ones. They're super cool, they can produce like 10 separate metered injection events per cycle. This is great for efficiency, noise, emissions, etc. But I can rebuild mechanical injectors with a bottle jack pop tester I made from $100 worth of parts and a bench vise. There's no wiring harness, no computer.. If the injector is getting fuel, has decent spray pattern, and is popping at the right pressure I know for certain the fuel system is good. With an electronic common rail system I need some expensive proprietary computer equipment to diagnose it, and there's no way I can build a test bench to rebuild those injectors.

[LeifCarrotson]

You can't build a test bench to rebuild current OEM's electronic common rail injector systems that rely on expensive proprietary computer equipment, but there's no reason that has to be the case.

With a $20 CAN transceiver, documentation and/or config files from the manufacturer, and a bit of Python or something, you could absolutely bench test those electronic injectors. You might even be able to pick your injection events and adjust the metering, supporting the equipment as it ages. I'd love to see Ursa Ag put in a Megasquirt engine controller [1] or Proteus [2] or similar. You can run TunerStudio on a Raspberry Pi and show it on a touchscreen on the dash.

It's possible to build user-friendly, inexpensive and open engine and vehicle controls. You don't need to have zero electronics to not have locked-down proprietary electronics, you just need to build the electronics in the right way.

[1] https://diyautotune.com/products/ms3357-c?_pos=2&_fid=69f494...

[2] https://rusefi.com/index.html#proteus

[jcgrillo]

Controls are one thing, but there's also the problem of generating 20k psi of oil pressure and some thousands of pounds of continuous common rail fuel pressure to actuate the injector. Compared with older MW, M, P, etc. styles it's a whole different beast. Also, we're talking past each other a little--I'm talking about diesel injectors, you're talking about otto cycle equipment ;)

[amluto]

Surely there’s room for a middle ground. There are plenty of 1990s-era engines that were excellent designs, had no meaningful connectivity to anything except their own ECUs, and could be produced new for not very much money. Some of them were quite modular, too — I know someone who took the drivetrain out of a salvaged Honda Civic and built an entire car (with no resemblance whatsoever to a Civc) around it.

If a tractor with a clean-burning, efficient $7500k engine could be purchased and were designed around the theory that, in 20 years or so, the owner could reasonably quickly replace the entire engine (with a first-party or aftermarket solution), would that be a good solution?

The common tech that has solved these problems nicely (IMO) is network transceivers: SFP and similar modules are built according to multi-source agreements. They contain all kinds of exotic tech, and they are not intended to be serviced at all, but (unless your switch or NIC has an utterly stupid lockout) you can pull it out and replace it with an equivalent part from a different vendor in seconds, and those parts can be unbelievably inexpensive considering what’s in them. (Single-mode bidirectional 1Gbps transceivers are $11 or less, retail, in qty 2. This is INSANE compared the the first time I lit up a 1Gbps SMF link. To be fair, this particular tech may require one to replace both ends if one fails, but if you can spare a second fiber, the fully IEEE-spec-compliant interoperable ones are even less expensive.)

[jcgrillo]

It's not the craziest idea. A tractor is basically just a big hydraulic pump driving a bunch of linear and rotary actuators (commonly called "motors" and "cylinders"). Especially if it's got a hydrostatic transmission. If you design it in such a way that it's relatively easy to adapt different clutches and bell housings, maybe with a little driveshaft and u-joint between the clutch and the pump, you could theoretically accomplish something like this.

However one major sticking point is that (often.. maybe always?) the engine block casting is actually a structural component of the tractor "frame". Unlike e.g. a truck that has its driveline mounted between frame rails, a tractor's "frame" is its driveline . So this might add quite a bit of complexity and cost.

[cineticdaffodil]

Eh to henerate a decent nozzle takes some precision lazer drilling (e.g.trumpf) or edm drilling (e.g posalux)and some grinding + a quality test bench. Its not that easy having good lowtech solutions either.

[jcgrillo]

Yeah you're definitely gonna want to purchase nozzles. They're extremely precise and manufactured to very high tolerances. I've rebuilt plenty of 30+yr old injectors and haven't yet been unable to find newly manufactured or new old stock nozzles though.

EDIT: I did have some nozzles bored out a little bit once by a shop with EDM equipment. Terrible results, not worth it.

[upofadown]

Note that that OEM would still have to deal with the minefield of patents created by the John Deere's of the world. I once worked for a company that had to work around an electronic circuit patent to detect a pulse. That was it, that was all it did. But if you used a standard differentiator circuit to detect the pulse created by a optical sensor watching for falling seeds you would violate the patent.

So a prerequisite might involve fixing the patent system...

[3RTB297]

It goes much deeper than that. The John Deere ecosystem is designed to trap farmers using a combination of the closed ecosystem and financing. They've been at it for years, selling precision agriculture advances as the thing that will maximize all yields and turn profits, and then following up with economic manipulations to create what amounts to tech-enabled sharecropping.

It's so bad the FTC and states had to sue Deere over just the right to repair. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/...

[noncoml]

It's not only the lock-in, as the document says, its about limiting the downtime.

Sailboats have the similar issue:

When are are in the middle of the pacific and get an egine problem, you want the engine to be low tech enough to be able to fix, or at least patch, yourself with minimum parts.

Yanmar switched its whole lineup of engines to ECU around 2014, but the one without ECU are very much sought after for the above reason.

[marcpaq]

Indeed, my boat has a Yanmar diesel engine from the 1980s. Except for the electrical needs of the starter motor, alternator, and a couple of alarm sensors, Yanmar and other makers of this vintage purposely made these engines to run entirely mechanically.

There are no digital controllers and no consequent promises of higher efficiency or reliability. More than one sailor I've talked to see this absence of electronics as a feature. Sailors are wary of gear that's difficult to understand.

With just a half-decent socket wrench set and a few other common tools, my delicate desk-job hands handle all maintenance tasks and most repairs.

[jmyeet]

Unfortunately it's doomed as soon as you read "startup". Why? There are two possible outcomes:

1. This fails, goes away and we're back where we started; or

2. They take the bag and sell to John Deere, who then locks down the tractors in the same way to force you to buy support, official parts and so on. And that'll happen. It's a bait-and-switch so somebody can get rich.

The only solution to this is collective ownership or some other non-profit structure so a handful of owners can't sell out and cash in.

Look to Spain's Mondragon Corporation [1] for inspiration.

[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/how-mondragon-be...

[rossjudson]

third outcome:

3. JD buys them, competition works, others notice they can just "build a tractor that's simple", and suddenly there are more competitors to choose from. JD still can't compete, and can't buy them all...or operate on small margins.

[9cb14c1ec0]

John Deere has lost so much good will among farmers due to their lock-in efforts, it's wild. Unfortunately, many farmers are stuck with them because the only tractor dealership within a reasonable distance is John Deere.

[PunchyHamster]

More that even if there was suitable replacement, that costs money vs tractor they already have. Those machines are in service for decades

[palmotea]

> However, the tech exists for a reason and is not inherently bad, the issue is the lock-in, the lack of choice and interoperability.

The problem is computers and software enable lock-in, because of their flexibility and communications capability. Get rid of them, and you make lock-in much more difficult (or even impossible if you use "standard" parts).

Also, computers and software are complex, and that complexity is not physically visible. If you want something you can completely understand, it's probably a good choice to simplify by cutting them out completely.

[tadfisher]

There's some nuance here. If you care about fuel consumption or emissions, then EFI is the current best way to reduce both, and that requires "computers and software" to operate on the timescales required. I put scare quotes around those terms because you can do EFI on an Arduino, which is at least an order of magnitude more powerful than what automakers shipped in the 80s.

In any case, EFI gives you more control over the engine and vastly simplifies the overall product. I don't know if you've seen the mechanical fuel-injection pumps used by tractor diesels; they are basically tiny engines unto themselves, with their own little block and camshaft [0]. There is an entire world of diesel performance modding with a subset of it dedicated to modifying the Bosh P1700 mechanical fuel-injection pump to change timings, handle higher RPMs, and run higher pressures. I would not call it, or its carburetor cousin in the gasoline world, "simple" compared to computer-controlled fuel delivery.

An open-source ECU project, on the other hand, enabled a hacker to implement Koenigsegg's Freevalve tech on a Miata [1].

[0]: https://blessedperformance.com/ddp-cummins-hot-street-p-pump...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9KJ_f7REGw

[GenerWork]

>An open-source ECU project, on the other hand, enabled a hacker to implement Koenigsegg's Freevalve tech on a Miata [1].

This is so cool, shame that Freevalve never seemed to go anywhere.

[markandrewj]

Do you work in the agricultural industry? Farm equipment is expensive, farmers will maintain the equipment as long as possible, which is a long time. Manufactures such as John Deere have tried to make it not possible for farmers to do self repair.

https://youtu.be/EPYy_g8NzmI

[drpixie]

>> However, the tech exists for a reason and is not inherently bad, the issue is the lock-in, the lack of choice and interoperability.

The marketing excuse for the tech might be features or efficiency, but the reason for the tech is lock-in and minimising product lifetime.

The days when manufacturers had friendly, cooperative relationships with their customers are long gone :( Can we bring them back? I hope so, but am not hopeful.

[bastardoperator]

Just call it what it is, greed. The idiots at John Deer thought strangling their customers to death was a good business model.

[jt2190]

Ultimately the “lock in” boils down to “when this breaks someone has to pay to fix it”. Automation and tech makes the galaxy of things that can break much larger, and the pinpointing of “who should pay to fix this” much harder. “Lock in” feels like an attempt to simplify toward “only we can fix it”, with the downsides of cost and time.

[burnte]

And there's also a place for OEMs who make the bare machines like this, and other people sell electronics to add!

[dilDDoS]

Maybe not inherently bad, but clearly not inherently necessary or useful if they're already getting so many inquiries from farmers. Could just be that the tech doesn't offer enough meaningful value when the core mechanical functionality can be achieved at a lower price.

[PunchyHamster]

The fact tractor isn't locked in means 3rd party equipment have a chance instead of having to sit in locked in garden of a given vendor.

Not sure they needed to go all the way to mechanical injection tho, this is just literally burning money away

[foobarian]

What if an OEM did the IBM thing and published open specs and software, spawning a whole industry? It's a shame the incentives don't seem to be there for it.

[laughing_man]

If you add a bunch of tech to, well, anything you have to go out of your way to make it not locked down.

[acedTrex]

The tech is inherently more expensive though. So if you want to undercut on price you have to cut costs somewhere.

[9rx]

The typical commercial farmer is going to be no more concerned about the software being locked down than the CEO of a marketing firm is concerned about Adobe products being locked down. It's not the core competency. They are using the product of a third-party vendor because they don't want to have to deal with it.

But technology is expensive. That's the play here: To strip the tech so that the tractor can be sold for a fraction of the cost. And for the farmers who don't need tech, that might be appealing. They will never win over the farmers who are already buying equipment with all the bells and whistles, but there could be an opportunity to capture those who are still in something 50 years old and are looking to update to an affordable newer machine that isn't worn out.

Repairability will be the biggest concern for any potential customer. It helps that they've tried to stay as "off-the-shelf" as possible, but the article suggests they struggle to keep parts already and there is no dealer network to see that the parts are sitting where the farmers are located. John Deere is the market leader mostly because they've worked hard to make sure you can get parts as soon as you need them and not have to wait days/weeks to have it shipped from across the country/world, if they exist at all. The Belarus tractor saga taught farmers the hard lesson of what happens when the machine is cheap to buy but parts are difficult to source long ago.

[pera]

I don't know anything about tractors but our modern world is full of useless and inherently bad "tech" that only exists for the flashy factor.

People are just tired of being mislead and abused by corporations, which is why there is now a market for non-tech products.

[Pikamander2]

The best analogy that I can think of is cruise control on a car.

Do you need it? No. Is it nice to have? Yes.

The strict "no tech" premise of these tractors feels comparable to someone disabling the cruise control feature on their own car because they read an article about BMW locking heated seats behind a subscription.

I don't know much about tractors, but I would think that surely there are some modern benefits that these Ursa tractors are missing out?

However, the article claims that they're selling really well, so maybe at that price point the tradeoffs are still worth it.

[pera]

For cars the classic example of inherently bad tech are touchscreen controls instead of physical knobs.

If you want more examples look into IoT products like smart toothbrushes, many of them now are "AI enabled".

[pcblues]

Software or hardware, the lock-down for dollars will blow back.

[steveBK123]

Framework tractor when

[jandrese]

For the farmers I know the price tag is the first thing they were looking at. So much grumbling about how Deere is using software to egregiously pad the price tag. Looking at a tractor that is going to take 5 or 6 years to pay off instead of 15 is tempting. Sadly Trump is absolutely going to slap a 400% tariff on these if they are even allowed to be imported.

[j45]

Whom tech benefits is worth keeping in mind.

Tech for improvement for customers vs tech for moats/enshittification, especially when imposed by one side on the other.

The latter is never very good.