We've got a Kubota CUT, when rats chewed out the writing harness we were 4 weeks before we had it up and running even with insurance + dealership.
Personally I'd love to see someone come in and clean house. Weight and torque are the two things you want in a tractor and electric has both in spades. I think tractors in the CUT space where hydrostatic transmission are common would make a really good fit since you can basically eliminate the HST.
If I had the option for either a pure-electric or diesel-electric I would have seriously considered it. At least in our case the workload is a lot of hauling, intermittent groundwork and field mowing(<10ac) all of which would have fit really well.
Also all the JD DRM stuff only applies in the larger 100hp+ market. In the SCUT/CUT/Utility Tractor market there's a fairly robust set of companies(Kubota, LS, JD, Mahindra, Yanmar, etc).
I just switched my search engine from DDG to StartPage because I was on a DDG results page and there was a pop-up advertising their app. Why does a search engine need a phone app? Seriously!
Honestly, if you’re concerned about being tracked then you should ignore adds directly related to the webpage your on. Advertising yoga mats on a yoga website don’t take insight into you. Advertising yoga mats on a personal finance site after you visited the yoga webpage is another story.
I would love this state, but getting there is not simple. DRM is just one facet of it: companies selling machinery have worked on hardware for decades, making their systems physically robust and able to take lots of abuse. This raises the barrier to entry a lot. My 2c.
See the comments about repair parts. These aren't cheap toys like smartphones and eyepads that are only meant to last a few years. Ag machinery are capital assets that should function for decades. The people buying this equipment are in it for the long haul, and anyone financing such a venture should be also.
If SV VC prefers scale-and-exit schemes, then it's not a good fit, but SV VC isn't the only source of capital.
> Honestly, I love watching these companies drive nails into their own coffins.
There's trillions to be made before AI is needed. There's no AI problem
AI isn't magic beans, it's only sold that way. AI will have DRM. Can you use GPT-3?
John Deere can at any time remove the DRM so not sure why they will get nails in their coffins. They have the lead and can pivot at any time. If DRM is a killer...
Of course, having that at launch is one thing, but future decisions could always be made by the bean counters leading to a locked down platform.
Mahindra is the worlds most popular tractor and any man and his dog can service them.
That said, lots of Kubota around these parts with KMA and KIE in the greater metro area.
They look solid, like cast iron old style tractors.
Also they are relatively inexpensive compared to like John Deere.
All that being said comparing them to big John Deere tractors is like comparing a golf cart to pickup truck. They don't make the massive sized ones that are responsible for the bulk of production field activity.
I’ve tried to replace Google with both DDG and Bing. Both of their results are frankly terrible compared to Google’s. Google’s transition to its current hybrid Ask-Jeeves-style question/traditional query search engine, along with its inline answers above the result list both blow its competitors out of the water. Google also does a much better job of letting the user know the freshness or up-to-dateness of results with its inline last-modified/updated time stamps.
Both of those things have made it impossible for me to switch off of Google without immediately having problems quickly finding relevant, up-to-date information on the web. I do desperately want to switch, though.
I also especially despise AMP. It constantly breaks websites and itself, especially on iOS.
I will literally pay money for a search engine that's privacy focused and can get closer to Google in terms of performance.
Even for not-that-obscure bands, all DDG needs to do is return the wikipedia page and it fails to do that.
A 70% reduction in Google sounds like a win.
> Don’t support these shitty companies
Then start by changing your phone.
But where’s the barrier to entry? AI is going to dramatically alter this competitive landscape and John Deere’s DRM is not going to to stop it.
Honestly, I love watching these companies drive nails into their own coffins.
I was on the Google homepage today on my iPhone and was getting popups advertising Chrome (on the homepage!) and then again in the search results advertising the Google app. I changed my default to DDG right then and there.
Seriously, it’s like 4 taps. Settings > Safari > Search Engine > DDG.
Don’t support these shitty companies and just watch them burn themselves to the ground. It might take 10 years but consumers ultimately will be the arbiter.