Yes you're right. As a farmer myself it drives me a bit crazy to see.

The largest Zetor tractor is 148 HP. The Ursa tractors are 180 and 260 hp, considered class 7 tractors. Zetor appears to only make class 5 and 6. So different markets.

No they are using Tier 4, late model 8.3s, probably the QSC series.

2020 time frame. 10.7L engine. OM 470 or something. I understand this engine is widely used in trucks, tractors, construction equipment. If I'm not mistaken it was introduced in 2016.

The market for electric tractors is incredibly small. They certainly do fill a small niche, though. Chore tractors for feeding cattle, small excavators, etc. See a US company called Nesher Equipment, for example.

Meanwhile for broad-acre tillage,planting, and harvesting, your average machine has at least 500L of fuel that lasts a day or two (or much less for some operations), which is, counting for thermal efficiency, the equivalent of at least 2500 kWh of battery storage.

We've been dealing with strict emission standards for agricultural vehicles since 2006. Current US regulations are Tier 4 and Tier 5. Unlike cars where the California market is huge and auto companies build for that market exclusively (thus setting the standard for the entire nation regardless of EPA), there is no reason for ag engine makers to target California, so they will have to be content with Tier 5.

Only a problem in the US?! Hardly. Problems with diesel emissions control systems are a plague for farmers (and truckers and auto owners) in Europe too. The main difference is that deleting is strictly forbidden there.

The Kirovets tractor? No of course not. Other than the ECU itself on the German engine, there are no electronics on that tractor. No CAN bus, no cell modem.

Deere tractors (and the other major brands), on the other hand, all now ship with cell modems that continuously report in to the mother ship to enable subscriptions for things like syncing GPS lines and coverage data between tractors working in the same field, or sending jobs from the OpCenter to the various tractors. This serves a very real purpose for farmers, but it can also be used by mother Deere for any purpose they deem appropriate including remote kill switch, as we saw in the tractors stolen from Ukraine.

Wow that's pretty cool you allow slashdot to show you ads. Very loyal of you!

Not sure why you would think Alibaba is blocked in the US. Many businesses in the US import goods from Chinese manufacturers, often through B2B transactions on Alibaba. As the importer they pay duties and tariff taxes to the US government.

What are you talking about? In Canada and the US agricultural diesel engines have to meet the same pollution control standards as on-the-road engines do. All diesel engines of a certain size have to meet EPA tier 4 limits for NOx and particulates. And starting in about 2024, Tier 5 came in. This Ursa tractor is no different. I must meet Tier 4 also. If regulations for agricultural engines were relaxed, Deere and others would happily sell tractors without DEF, EGR, and DPF. In fact in countries without strict pollution standards, they do still sell Tier 3 engines in their tractors.

I cannot speak to the original V8 engine. To my knowledge that engine is still used in Russia and other FSB countries. However, that was not the engine they were using in the K744 they were selling here, which had to meet Tier 4 emissions controls. For north America and Europe, Kirovets used a standard 6-cylinder Mercedes engine that was Tier 4 compliant. Comparable fuel burn to FPT, Cummins, etc.

As a farmer I can say you're not wrong there... It's just that our kind of laziness involves 16 hour days.

For what this Ursa tractor would be most used for, which would be a chore tractor lifting bales, etc, GPS isn't needed. For other kinds of farm work, though, adding GPS to it would be a given. There are many options for adding GPS guidance, so that's not a problem.

Oh and many diesel shops can easily remove the DEF system and reprogram the engine ECU to run reliably.

The Ursa tractor has a Cummins 8.3L engine in it that already must meet emissions standards. The engine itself has an ECU and if it does have DEF dosing, it's done by a Bosch ECU. But that's all self-contained. The rest of the tractor has no electronics except 12V to run the AC, lights, etc.

As a farmer I can say there is some definite demand for a tractor like this. However I am skeptical that expressed interest will translated into demand for thousands of units. Farmers are an odd bunch. They complain about the high cost of machinery, and the right to repair, but in the end things like cab comfort and ease of operation (CVT!) carry a ton of weight. Farmers say they hate all the electronics, but they really love GPS autosteer and features like automatic gear selection and throttle control, or the ease of using electric-over-hydraulic implement control.

Some years ago I was interested in the Kirovets K744 tractor made in Russia. It's widely used in FSB countries and is designed for ease of maintenance and repair, and it's a proven machine. But even without Putin's war that pretty much killed access to them, in the end even at half the price of an equivalent north American machine, it was still a difficult sell here. The transmission controls were very different from anything we're used to, and some of the design was just, well, soviet. The dealer was very responsive, but they covered a very wide area, which is a concern compared to the mainline dealerships.

Ursa will sell some tractors, no doubt. Hopefully word of mouth will tell us that they are reliable and useful tractors.