The solar-electric tractor is out standing in its field.

Adding Solar Power To An Electric Tractor

January 2, 2026 by Tyler August 9 Comments

In my country, we have a saying: the sun is a deadly lazer. Well, it’s not so much a folk saying as a meme, and not so much in one country as “the internet”. In any case, [LiamTronix] was feeling those cancer rays this harvest season when running his electric tractor, and realized that– since he’s already charging it with ground-mounted solar panels anyway–if he’s going to build a roof for his ride, he might as well make charge the batteries.

Another bonus is safety: the old Massey-Ferguson at the heart of the electric tractor build didn’t come with any rollover protection from the factory back in the 1960s. Since having however many tons of tractor roll onto you was bad enough before it got a big hefty battery pack, we heartily approve of including a roll cage in this build. Speaking of battery packs, he’s taking this chance to upgrade to a larger LiFePo pack from the LiIon pack he installed when we first featured this conversion in 2024.

Atop the new roll cage, and above the new battery, [Liam] installed four second-hand 225 W solar panels. Since that’s under 1kW even if the panels have not degraded, the tractor isn’t going to be getting much charge as it runs. In the northern winter, [Liam] is only able to pull 80 W from the set. That’s not getting much work done, but who wants a tractor without a cab or heater when it’s below freezing? In the summer it’s a much better story, and [Liam] estimates that the roof-mounted panels should provide all of the energy needed to run the tractor for the couple hours a day he expects to use it.

If you’re wondering how practical all this is, yes, it can farm — we covered [Liam] putting the project through its paces in early 2025.

An Electric Converted Tractor CAN Farm!

January 23, 2025 by Jenny List 14 Comments

Last October we showed you a video from [LiamTronix], in which he applied an electric conversion to a 1960s Massey-Ferguson 65 which had seen better days. It certainly seemed ready for light work around the farm, but it’s only now that we get his video showing the machine at work. This thing really can farm!

An MF 65 wasn’t the smallest of 1960s tractors, but by today’s standards it’s not a machine you would expect to see working a thousand acres of wheat. Instead it’s a typical size for a smaller operation, perhaps a mixed farm, a small livestock farm, or in this case a horticulture operation growing pumpkins. In these farms the tractor doesn’t often trail up and down a field for hours, instead it’s used for individual smaller tasks where its carrying or lifting capacity is needed, or for smaller implements. It’s in these applications that we see the electric 65 being tested, as well as some harder work such as hauling a trailer load of bales, or even harrowing a field.

In one sense the video isn’t a hack in itself, for that you need to look at the original build. But it’s important to see how a hack turned out in practice, and this relatively straightforward conversion with a DC motor has we think proven itself to be more than capable of small farm tasks. Its only flaw in the video is a 30 minute running time, something he says he’ll be working on by giving it a larger battery pack. We’d use it on the Hackaday ancestral acres, any time!

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An Electric Vehicle Conversion With A Difference

October 30, 2024 by Jenny List 26 Comments

For a first try at an electric vehicle conversion we’re guessing that most would pick a small city car as a base vehicle, or perhaps a Kei van. Not [LiamTronix], who instead chose to do it with an old Ferguson tractor. It might not be the most promising of EV platforms, but as you can see in the video below, it results in a surprisingly practical agricultural vehicle.

A 1950s or 1960s tractor like the Ferguson usually has its engine as a structural member with the bellhousing taking the full strength of the machine and the front axle attached to the front of the block. Thus after he’s extracted the machine from its barn we see him parting engine and gearbox with plenty of support, as it’s a surprisingly hazardous process. These conversions rely upon making a precise plate to mount the motor perfectly in line with the input shaft. We see this process, plus that of making the splined coupler using the center of the old clutch plate. It’s been a while since we last did a clutch alignment, and seeing him using a 3D printed alignment tool we wish we’d had our printer back then.

The motor is surprisingly a DC unit, which he first tests with a 12 V car battery. We see the building of a hefty steel frame to take the place of the engine block in the structure, and then a battery pack that’s beautifully built. The final tractor at the end of the video still has a few additions before it’s finished, but it’s a usable machine we wouldn’t be ashamed to have for small round-the-farm tasks.

Surprisingly there haven’t been as many electric tractors on these pages as you’d expect, though we’ve seen some commercial ones.

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Will Electric Tractors Farm Your Food?

May 30, 2023 by Jenny List 119 Comments

There are two professions used to driving single-seaters with hundreds of horsepower, one of which is very exclusive and the other of which can be found anywhere the ground is fertile enough to support agriculture. Formula One drivers operate fragile machines pushed to the edges of their performance envelope, while the tractor at the hands of a farmer is designed to reliably perform huge tasks on dodgy ground in all weathers. Today’s tractor is invariably a large machine powered by a diesel engine, and it’s the equal of all tasks on a modern farm. Against that backdrop then it’s interesting to read the Smithsonian magazine’s look at the emerging world of electric tractors. Will they replace diesel as the source of traction in the fields?

The two firms they focus on first are Monarch Tractor, and Solectrac. Both manufacturers offer small machines of the type we’d be inclined to describe as an orchard tractor, and Monarch are offering an autonomous option as part of their package. They also feature Farm-ng, whose machine called amusingly the Amiga, is a much smaller affair which we are guessing would be super-useful on a very intensive operation such as market gardening. We’re especially pleased to see that the emerging small electric tractor industry is embracing right to repair, something the traditional manufacturers are famous for ignoring.

It’s obvious that none of these machines are going to revolutionize the world of large high-power tractors any time soon, as they are too small for the job and can’t offer the 24/7 operation required at busy times on a farm. But it’s obvious they would be very useful on a small farm, and in particular for those tractor applications where the machine is a platform which goes from place to place to aid static work, they could be better than their diesel equivalents.

It’s odd that over the years we’ve not covered any electric tractors before. Perhaps that is, until you search instead for agricultural robots.