Peter Eckhoff wrote:
When you are in the middle of eastern Montana, the nearest electric utility line could be miles from the combine.
Not likely. Most farms are highly automated, and electric power is everywhere. The pumps in the middle of those fields are electrically driven.
The cord would be a PITA to move.
True, it's a challenge. The farm that I saw using a corded tractor had a big pole in the middle of the field, where the power was. The tractor had a large spool of wire mounted on top of it. The tractor drove in circles around the pole, unrolling the wire from the spool as it went around. The wire was thus airborne, and both provided power and steered the tractor.
Combines running off the fermented alcohol from last year's crop might be a better option. Also, at the end of a successful combine run, the combine tanks might be dipped into to commence a celebration. This as opposed to winding up miles of extension cord.
In the USA, most farm tractors run on diesel. Even if they make ethanol, they don't run their tractors on it. This has led to debates about the sense of raising corn to make ethanol, where the farm equipment burns more fuel than the field produces. -- A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering. -- Freeman Dyson -- Lee Hart -- see my EVs and projects at http://www.sunrise-ev.com/ _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
