Kubota X Tractor Unveiled

[dlsmith]

Kubota this week unveiled a futuristic concept autonomous tractor called the X-tractor. The battery-powered, tracked machine was first shown at a new product exhibition in Kyoto City, Japan.

https://www.agweb.com/article/kubota-unveils-autonomous-x-tractor-concept

 

[bcp]

No more seat time? No loader? No front implements?

Just tell it to go clean up that tree that fell over in the storm?



Bruce

 

[man00]

Looks like something I saw on the new Lost in Space

 

[chim]

Electric vehicles are so misrepresented to make a small segment of the population feel good. Now we have this Charlie Romeo Alpha Poppa with tractors?

 

[SidecarFlip]

Looks to me like an R&D department with too much idle time on their hands. No rice paddies anywhere around here that I know of either.

Reminds me of my wife's Roomba. What a useless POS vacuum cleaner but it is good entertainment for the cats...

 

[sheepfarmer]

In Japan farming is an entirely different breed of cat from here, a tiny light weight tractor is what is needed in some places. I helped plant rice once in a plot basically the size of a vacant lot, in town. In that case it was being done by hand by friends and family, sort of like the old fashioned barn raising. I saw all kinds of ingenious tiny farm and construction equipment so it would fit the small fields or the narrow streets. No arable land goes to waste.

 

[quazz]

I think that thing looks really cool. Outside of mowing my field I don't like the autonomous bit though, I like tractoring.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

That's a TUV not a tractor ! Must be nice to get paid large for desigining a Totally Useless Vehicle.
Lots of easy to break 'plastic'. aerodynamic too, ,that's needed at 2 MPH ! I could go on but really it can't do ONE job on my property.
Hate to see the 'run time / power ' data let alone price tag for the batteries, that will need replacing every 5 years.

 

[skeets]

Really that is a nice build except for the electric part,, I would really like the 1970 concept one that would be super cool

 

[todd.ted]

Looks like the R&D department got high after the Tesla Cybertruck launch and created this model...

 

[PaulL]

Looks like the R&D department got high after the Tesla Cybertruck launch and created this model...

Yup. And Kubota need to show some funky prototype stuff or else the industry analysts start saying that they're not on top of market trends and losing relevance etc. Same as the crazy concept cars that auto makers take to car shows. They know they're never making it, but if their board doesn't see them doing stuff like that they get worried.

In my business the equivalent thing is artificial intelligence. We all know it won't work for at least 15 years, if then, but if you don't do some projects that have AI written in the description somewhere then the board thinks we're not on top of industry trends. There's massive market for rebranding things that people already have and use as "AI" so that you can pretend you're doing cool new things when it's really same old stuff in a different tin.