Quiet, connected and heavily subsidised in some regions, battery-electric tractors are edging out of the demo plot. The question now is whether they can survive real-world economics, not just glossy brochures.
Just after sunrise on a farm outside Bengaluru, a compact 27-horsepower tractor sits tethered to a wall-mounted charger. There is no clatter of a diesel engine warming up, no blue haze of exhaust; only the click of relays and the distant sound of irrigation pumps.
The machine is built by Moonrider, a young Indian manufacturer that has just closed a US$6 million Series A round led by deep-tech investor pi Ventures, joined by Singularity AMC and existing backers. Its founders, veterans of the electric-vehicle industry, promise tractors that cost roughly the same to buy as diesel models but are dramatically cheaper to run — a proposition aimed squarely at small and mid-sized farms across the global south.
Half a world away in California and Europe, a different breed of quiet tractor is rolling through vineyards and orchards. Monarch Tractor’s MK-V — a fully electric, “driver-optional” machine — is already working on specialty farms, with more than 400 units deployed and some 42,000 hours logged in the field, avoiding an estimated 850 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. New Holland’s T4 Electric Power and Fendt’s e107 Vario are entering commercial production, offering 70–75 horsepower and battery packs around 100–110 kWh.
The hardware is finally real. Yet against a backdrop of volatile crop prices, softening demand for conventional machinery and patchy government support, the key question is no longer whether electric tractors can be built. It is whether they can move beyond showcase farms and pilot fleets into the messy middle of the global tractor market.
The climate math: small slice, big symbolism
Agriculture accounts for roughly 11–15 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, depending on how land-use change is counted. Most of that comes from biological processes: methane from livestock, nitrous oxide from soils, and carbon released by clearing forests.
Fossil fuels burned in tractors and other on-farm machinery are a smaller share of the pie — but not trivial. In the European Union, fuel used in agricultural and forestry machinery contributes about 1 per cent of total EU greenhouse-gas emissions. A recent analysis for the U.S. Congress puts fuel use in farm machinery and facilities at around 8 per cent of emissions from the American agriculture sector.
In fast-mechanising economies, the trend is moving in the wrong direction. A Nature Food study of China’s farm equipment finds that CO₂ emissions from tractors and other machinery rose from roughly 23 million tonnes in 1985 to nearly 160 million tonnes by 2020 — a seven-fold increase — and now account for about 1.5 per cent of national emissions. Left unchecked, the researchers warn, machinery alone could contribute up to a fifth of the country’s carbon and air-pollutant emissions from agriculture by mid-century.
In other words, electric tractors will not “solve” agriculture’s climate problem. But they target the part of the system that looks most like conventional transport: fossil fuel burned in engines. That makes them attractive to policymakers and investors looking for quick wins and clear accounting.
A tiny electric niche inside a giant diesel market
The conventional tractor business is enormous. Analysts estimate that the global agricultural tractor market now ships roughly 3.1–3.4 million units a year, with annual revenues in the US$65–70 billion range and growth of about 5–7 per cent a year through the rest of the decade. India alone is on track to sell close to a million tractors annually in good monsoon years, with recent months setting all-time records for domestic sales.
Against this backdrop, electric tractors remain a rounding error. One industry forecast values the global electric tractor market at about US$200 million in 2024, rising to around US$1.6 billion by 2032 — still a small fraction of the overall tractor business. Another report pegs Europe’s electric tractor market at US$34 million in 2024, with a projected doubling by 2030. Even if the most optimistic projections prove accurate, electric machines are likely to account for well under 5 per cent of tractor sales globally by the early 2030s, and far less in terms of installed fleet.
Yet the roster of serious players is growing. Monarch’s MK-V, built in California but deployed in 12 U.S. states and several countries, helps anchor a premium, autonomy-heavy corner of the market. New Holland’s T4 Electric Power — a 75 horsepower utility tractor with a 110 kWh battery and optional autonomous features — is being positioned for mixed farms, livestock operations and municipal work, with the manufacturer touting operating-cost savings of “up to 56 per cent” versus an equivalent diesel model.
In Europe, AGCO’s Fendt e107 Vario and e100 Vario target vineyards, horticulture and livestock farms, offering around 55 kW of continuous power and a 100 kWh battery, good for roughly 4–7 hours of work at partial load before recharging. John Deere, the dominant brand in many markets, has shown E-Power prototypes with modular battery packs and 100-horsepower electric drive motors, but is still talking in terms of pilots and future commercialisation.
The most striking recent entrance, however, is from the global south.
Moonrider’s wager: high-horsepower electrons for the global south
Moonrider, founded in 2023 by former Volvo executives in Bengaluru, is explicit about where it wants to play: heavy-duty electric tractors for developing countries, with a business model that does not depend entirely on subsidies. Its current line-up includes a 27 horsepower “Force” model with a claimed seven hours of runtime on standard charging and 30-minute rapid-charge capability, and a 75 horsepower “Maxforce” machine aimed at commercial operators.
The company markets its tractors as being priced on par with diesel equivalents, arguing that most of the financial advantage comes from dramatically lower running costs. Marketing material and investor commentary suggest that, in Indian conditions with subsidised or free farm electricity, switching to a high-horsepower electric tractor could reduce fuel and maintenance costs by as much as 70–80 per cent for certain operations.
Moonrider’s pitch is not just about the motor. It emphasises “digital-first” features: telematics, remote diagnostics and usage analytics that allow fleets to be monitored from a phone, with over-the-air software updates. Investors describe the company as building “the foundational platform for sustainable, autonomous, data-driven agriculture” rather than simply another tractor brand.
In effect, Moonrider is betting that emerging markets can leapfrog directly from fuel-intensive, often poorly maintained diesel tractors to electric machines that double as connected devices — provided the economics are competitive out of the gate.
What the physics say: energy, emissions and costs
Strip away the branding and the underlying physics of electric tractors are straightforward.
Several recent engineering studies simulate different tractor powertrains — diesel, hybrid, gas, fuel cell and battery electric — across typical field operations. One 2025 analysis from researchers in Finland and Germany finds that, in grain production scenarios, a battery-electric tractor can reduce annual CO₂ emissions by about 96 per cent compared with a conventional diesel machine, assuming relatively clean grid electricity.
Another study, from the Technical University of Munich, models an “economically viable” electric tractor concept for smallholder farms in Germany and sub-Saharan Africa. It concludes that with thoughtful design and appropriate charging strategies, operating costs can be roughly 25 per cent lower than for an equivalent diesel tractor, even before counting health or climate benefits. The catch: upfront purchase costs remain a hurdle, particularly in lower-income markets.
Real-world deployments echo the lab work. Monarch claims that its MK-V customers have collectively offset more than 850 tonnes of CO₂ in just over 42,000 hours of operation, thanks to zero local exhaust and increasingly decarbonised grid electricity or on-farm solar. New Holland, for its part, advertises operating-cost savings of up to 56 per cent for its T4 Electric Power compared with a similar diesel tractor, chiefly due to cheaper “fuel” and lower maintenance.
The economics are sensitive, though, to a few variables:
- Energy price spread. Where diesel is heavily taxed and electricity relatively cheap — or where farms can generate their own solar power — the fuel-cost advantage of electric tractors is compelling. The opposite is true in regions where diesel is subsidised and electricity tariffs are high or volatile.
- Utilisation. The more hours a tractor works, the faster lower running costs pay back the initial price premium. High-value horticulture, vineyards and municipal work with year-round usage are better candidates than a small cereal farm that runs a tractor hard for only a few weeks during planting and harvest.
- Battery life and duty cycle. Deep discharging, heavy towing and hot climates can shorten battery life, eroding the long-term economic case unless packs are sized and cooled carefully.
From a pure physics standpoint, electric traction is highly efficient. The challenge is aligning that efficiency with the lumpy, seasonal and often credit-constrained cash flows of real farms.
Range anxiety meets harvest season
Electric tractor marketing likes to emphasise torque and smoothness. Farmers worry about something more prosaic: will the machine last a working day?
Here the picture is mixed. Fendt’s e107 Vario, with its 100 kWh battery, delivers between four and seven hours of runtime at partial load, such as mowing or mechanical weeding. Heavy hauling or deep tillage will drain the pack faster. New Holland’s T4 Electric Power, with a slightly larger battery and 75 horsepower rating, is marketed for loader work, livestock operations and transport tasks that can be scheduled around charging windows rather than continuous 12-hour shifts.
For many specialised operations — vine spraying, orchard mowing, municipal mowing, dairy feed pushing — a few hours of runtime, supplemented by opportunistic fast charging during breaks, may be sufficient. Monarch even promotes 24/7 autonomous feed-pushing for dairies, using the MK-V to nudge feed closer to animals in regular cycles while reducing diesel use and labour.
But for broadacre grain farms in North America or Australia, where tractors may run almost non-stop in tight planting or harvest windows, a four-hour battery is a serious constraint. Swappable battery packs, high-power DC chargers in the yard, or hybrid configurations that blend batteries with bio- or synthetic fuels may be necessary. Several research groups are now modelling such hybrid and swappable systems to see where they make economic sense.
Range, in other words, is less an engineering problem than an operational one. The question is not “can an electric tractor pull a plough?” — it plainly can — but whether the farm can reorganise work patterns and invest in charging so that batteries are not the limiting factor in peak season.
From diesel drums to transformers: the infrastructure problem
Replacing a diesel tractor is not just about swapping engines. It shifts the farm’s energy system from tanks and drums to cables and transformers.
A single 75-horsepower electric tractor drawing 40–80 kW for fast charging can put serious strain on rural distribution lines originally sized for lighting, small motors and maybe a milking parlour. A U.S. industry guide to farm electrification notes that one of the biggest barriers to electrifying equipment is the upfront cost of upgrading service connections, transformers and on-farm wiring, even before buying the machines themselves.
Large farms in Europe and North America with on-site solar or wind generation — and the capital to install dedicated chargers — are already experimenting with using electric tractors as flexible loads, charging when power is abundant and cheap. In parts of India, where many states massively subsidise agricultural electricity, developers like Moonrider are explicitly designing around the fact that, once a connection exists, the marginal cost of running a tractor can be low.
But in many emerging markets the basic infrastructure is lacking: unreliable supply, low-capacity lines, frequent outages. For smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa, the TUM study on electric tractors notes that local micro-grids or centralised charging hubs may be needed, with tractors hired as a service rather than owned outright. That turns electrification from a simple “capex vs opex” calculation into a full system redesign.
Subsidies, vouchers and policy whiplash
Public policy is trying to nudge the transition — but in a fragmented, sometimes contradictory way.
In India, several central and state-level schemes now offer support for electric tractors. Trade press reports talk of subsidies up to ₹5 lakh (roughly US$6,000) per electric tractor and zero-interest loans under an “Electric Tractor Scheme India 2025”, alongside more general EV incentives worth 20–30 per cent of purchase cost. Yet a recent technical analysis by the International Council on Clean Transportation highlights how poorly designed subsidies can miss the mark: Andhra Pradesh offers a 5 per cent subsidy on e-tractors priced below ₹800,000, but most models cost more, and as of mid-2025 no farmer had taken up the scheme.
In the United States, the push is driven more at state and regional levels. California’s Clean Off-Road Equipment Voucher Incentive Project (CORE) provides substantial point-of-sale rebates for zero-emission off-road equipment, including tractors, which can cut tens of thousands of dollars from the price of an electric machine. Local air districts and community energy providers, such as Central Coast Community Energy, offer stackable grants and rebates to replace diesel agricultural equipment with electric alternatives under programmes like “Ag Electrification.”
At the federal level, the picture is more turbulent. The Inflation Reduction Act poured billions into conservation and climate-smart agriculture programmes, some of which can support electrification. But in April 2025, the Trump administration cancelled a US$3 billion USDA programme for climate-friendly farming practices, citing concerns about how funds were allocated — a reminder that policy support can be reversed with a single election.
Europe, by contrast, has aligned its climate and machinery agendas more tightly. Emissions from farm fuel use are explicitly counted in national carbon budgets, and restrictive air-quality rules in some regions are pushing older diesel tractors off the road. In such an environment, a niche electric tractor market worth US$34 million in 2024 can plausibly double or triple over the decade, not just because of economics but because regulation forces the issue.
For manufacturers and farmers alike, this patchwork creates uncertainty. Incentives can make an electric tractor irresistible in one state and marginal in the next — complicating efforts to build scale.
The tractor as robot and data hub
One of the subtler shifts in the electric-tractor story is that the machines are becoming rolling computers.
Monarch’s MK-V is branded as “driver-optional”: an operator can sit in the cab, but in many use-cases the tractor follows pre-programmed routes, navigates rows using cameras and sensors, and is supervised via a digital platform called WingspanAI. New Holland’s T4 Electric Power similarly integrates a “smart roof” with sensor arrays, telematics and semi-autonomous functions for repetitive tasks.
John Deere, still the heavyweight of the global tractor market, has gone even further at the prototype stage, unveiling autonomous tractors and orchard-specific machines with lidar and on-board Nvidia GPUs, designed to operate with minimal human intervention in fields and orchards.
Electric drivetrains make some of this easier. Electric motors are inherently more controllable than diesel engines, with finer torque modulation, instant response and fewer mechanical linkages. They pair naturally with software-defined controls and remote diagnostics. The same high-voltage battery that powers the wheels can also drive electric sprayers or implements, eliminating hydraulic complexity.
For farmers, the upside is potentially higher productivity, better safety and more granular data on operations. For manufacturers and investors, the prize may be recurring software and service revenue — “tractor-as-a-service” models where autonomy, analytics and even energy management are sold on subscription.
The flip side is a new layer of dependency. Concerns about right-to-repair and data ownership, already acute in the case of diesel tractors, become sharper when a machine’s core functions are locked behind software and connectivity controlled by a distant vendor. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s scrutiny of John Deere’s repair policies hints at the regulatory battles to come.
Solectrac’s demise: a cautionary tale
The electric-tractor story is not one of unbroken progress. The collapse of Solectrac, once a poster child for zero-emission tractors in the U.S., is a cautionary counterpoint.
Founded in California in 2012, Solectrac built small electric tractors targeted at vineyards and small farms and secured early grants and investment. But its parent company, Ideanomics, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware in December 2024 after years of losses, with court filings noting that business lines including Solectrac had been “shuttered or left without supporting funding.” Dealers and customers reported being left with orphaned machines and little technical support.
The episode underlines several risks. Electric tractors are capital-intensive to develop, but sales volumes are still tiny. If a specialist manufacturer cannot secure stable financing or a larger partner, customers take on not just product risk but vendor-survival risk.
It also shapes farmer psychology. A grower burned by one failed brand may be reluctant to adopt the next, particularly if software and specialised parts are involved. For mainstream adoption, farmers will want reassurance that someone will be around to service batteries and electronics a decade from now — whether that is a big OEM, a robust local dealer network or a third-party service ecosystem.
Where electric tractors make sense first
Set aside the marketing claims and the political rhetoric, and a pattern emerges in where electric tractors are most likely to gain real traction in the near term.
High-value, low-acreage operations. Vineyards, orchards, horticultural greenhouses and speciality crops offer a sweet spot: high margins, year-round tasks, and strong pressure to reduce noise, emissions and chemical use. Monarch’s early deployments in California vineyards, and Fendt’s positioning of its e-series for horticulture and livestock farms, fit this logic.
Farms with their own clean power. Where farms already have rooftop or ground-mounted solar, an electric tractor can double as a way to monetise excess midday generation and hedge against diesel price volatility. European farms with feed-in tariffs past their prime, and progressive dairy or vegetable farms in North America, are obvious candidates.
Regions with cheap or subsidised electricity. In parts of India and other emerging markets, electricity for agriculture is heavily subsidised or free, while diesel prices have risen. Investors backing Moonrider explicitly highlight this arbitrage, arguing that high-horsepower electric tractors can be shared across co-ops or fleets to exploit low per-unit energy costs.
Municipal and non-farm users. Many early orders for electric tractors have come from municipalities, parks departments and airports, where the appeal is as much about public image and local air quality as cost. For these users, short daily duty cycles and easy access to grid power make electrification simpler.
Large, extensive grain farms and contractors — the backbone of tractor volumes — are likely to be slower adopters. Hybrids, biofuels and incremental efficiency gains may dominate in those segments for longer, with full electrification reserved for specific tasks rather than the entire fleet.
What “scale beyond pilots” really means
So, can electric farm machinery really scale beyond pilot projects?
In some ways, it already has. Monarch’s 400-plus tractors, New Holland’s first production runs of the T4 Electric Power, and Fendt’s e-series moving from prototype to order book all point to real, not hypothetical, demand. Moonrider’s fresh capital, and its positioning in one of the world’s largest tractor markets, suggests that the next wave of growth may come from emerging economies rather than Europe alone.
Yet relative to the diesel incumbents, electric tractors remain a niche. The global electric tractor market is measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, not tens of billions; the installed base in the low thousands of units, not millions. And the same headwinds hitting conventional tractor manufacturers — softer farmer incomes, higher interest rates, and in some cases over-capacity — will not spare electric newcomers. CNH Industrial, parent of New Holland, recently cut its profit forecast amid weaker demand for tractors and combines, a reminder that electrification is unfolding in a cyclical, not abstract, economy.
The more interesting question, perhaps, is what kind of scale matters. If electric tractors capture 5–10 per cent of new sales in segments where they deliver clear economic and environmental benefits — specialty crops, municipal fleets, co-operative fleets in regions with cheap clean power — they could play an outsized role in decarbonising farm energy use and demonstrating new autonomous models, even while diesel remains dominant elsewhere.
For policymakers, the lesson is that generic EV incentives may not be enough; support needs to align with the realities of farm cash flows, grid constraints and vendor risk. For investors, Solectrac’s fate is a warning that this is an industrial, not a pure software, business: capital-heavy, cyclical and politically exposed.
For farmers, the decision will be less ideological than practical. If a quiet, electric, semi-autonomous tractor can do a specific job reliably, slot into existing workflows and pencil out financially over a reasonable payback period, it will find a home in the yard. If not, it will sit on the trade-show stand, humming softly, while diesel engines continue to do the hard work.
The tractors themselves are ready. Whether the surrounding economics, infrastructure and politics are ready is the real test that begins now.
