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Because farms are huge, and any given unit of area needs to be touched relatively infrequently.

• api 7y ago
  Cables can be thin and long. Look at high tension wires which carry vastly more power. It stands to reason that a much thinner lighter cord could run a combine.
  • mikestew 7y ago
    I won’t even use a corded lawn mower. I highly doubt I’d put up with dragging a wire behind a combine through a 400 acre field.
    • api 7y ago
      Not dragging but way overhead from something about the height of a radio tower. There could be one about every square mile in a grid. It could have a smaller battery too to permit driving between them. Drive up, hook on, unhook, go to next.
      • mikestew 7y ago
        It occurs to me that because I’ve operated farm equipment, maybe one should ignore my poo-pooing. Seriously, sure, I can tell you eight ways to Sunday this won’t work, and some smarty-pants can show me how I’m wrong. But right now I’m just stuck in a mode of “that’s more hassle than filling it with diesel and being done with it”. I might be right, but that’s not where innovation comes from, so I’ll be quiet.
        • api 7y ago
          It probably is more of a hassle but it would also be cheaper and lower emission. Of course I dont know if fuel is a significant cost to farmers. There may be ways to make it less of a hassle by automating it somehow. I'm thinking of some standard hook on/off system. It's a tough problem though. Maybe batteries will just keep getting better and lighter and cheaper and we can just go that way.
          • ethbro 7y ago
            You're suggesting a large capital investment, with dubious utility, in a leveraged, low margin business with little access to technologically aggressive capital funding. Furthermore, it's predicated on the supplier developing and marketing a class of equipment for which little demand currently exists. Against that, the price of diesel seems relatively small.