Modern tractors literally drive themselves and use computers and GPS to determine optimal patterns to maximize output as well as application of fertilizer and pesticides.
10:15 PM on 01/08/2020
+4
Tractors got self-steering and satellite GPS guidance years before cars. Time to update your medieval idea of agriculture if you want to make snide comments
Yeah. It's not as simple as it seems. There may be some over the top things like screens but like they are saying, a lot of the tech was specifically designed to make the machine more productive and profitable which is exactly how technology should be applied. But, it costs money, and if there are reliability issues, that can change the equation.
Farmers have a limited time to harvest their crop. They do not have time to wait for a factory rep to arrive and repair their machinery. They are accustomed to repairing their equipment as it fails so they can get back to work. Modern farm equipment does not allow this option without voiding the warranty. This is the core issue
Like I said, you chip away at the original advantages/efficiencies when there are on-the-job breakdowns that waste time and require costly specialized repair.
Anoop G. wrote:
The bulk of so called innovation in the last decade is anything but. The only piece of useful tech in cars has been the rear backup camera.
The only innovation that has mattered in the last decade has been financial engineering. Companies that have the best financial engineers and the best Chief Ethics Officer (whose job it is to ensure that the company can operate its most unethical without getting caught) finish on top.
Bluetooth improvements, navigation improvements, blind spot monitoring, collision alerts, internet radio, Car Play, advances in traction control, added transmission gears (yes tech), smaller engines producing more hp and getting better mpg, cylinder deactivation, EV's, hybrids, you may not like them but the market does. There are plenty of used 10 year old cars, feel free to buy one.
These manufacturers are pretty much leaving their customers out to dry in an effort to make more money on the back-end and it sounds like it is starting to backfire on them.
I don't know how tractor dealers work but this is a very common conspiracy theory for light duty cars/trucks. It is false. Manufacturers would love nothing more than for you to buy a vehicle and NEVER go back to a dealer until it is time to purchase another car. The dealer is an independent business and is nothing but a necessary evil for the OEM. Nothing good happens at a dealer aside from selling NEW cars, if you are an OEM. Warranty work? Well that's the opposite of profit. Selling you that extra tranny flush? OEM gets zero dollars but also may still suffer negative brand blowback from the unsatisfied customer, when it is the dealer who has screwed the customer. I don't know why people run with this kind of stuff. It's not true.
I was referring to the extra stuff that keeps getting added that really isn't needed to drive a car which people need to get to work in most cases so it is similar. Some of which could be assisted driving stuff, infotainment tech, turbo engines that get equivalent real world mpg as bigger modern NA engines. These are driving prices up.
I will not say some of these are better, but, the argument in the tractor article was about unnecessary standard equipment driving cost for something that in the end is better than what they need.
You'd have to look at where the costs are. Perhaps most of the costs are in technology that makes the tractor more productive - the vibe of the article seems to imply that tractors are basically the same except for superfluous "gadgets.". I don't think it is that simple. It would be easy to look at the cab, see some screens, and assume that there is extra cost there but it's not like it's $80k. Or even $8k.
Oh. Well yeah there is extra cost. But, how much of it is something other than government regulations or stuff designed to make the cars more appealing to consumers (to sell more vehicles, perhaps provide an advantage over the competition)?
I will agree that when an OEM gets a check for the purchase price of their vehicle, they don't really care how the money arrived. If they are doing their own financing, that makes money anyway. So maybe the argument is, there is a (lack of) sensitivity in the feedback loop. I even wonder about that. If an OEM reads articles about how consumers think vehicles are too expensive, and Honda for example says "we looked at the numbers and we sell 3x more loaded EX-L Accords than base LX at an average of $10k more transaction price - don't see an issue here." What would you say to that?
More importantly, how should Honda react to that feedback if that is the feedback that they received? If all of this narrative were 100% true, the feedback should be "we can barely move the high trim/profit vehicles - people are clearly clamoring for more base models." That would absolutely drive the market but I can guarantee that is not the trend that is occurring.
I mean, Bill, you lived that with your 3. It was a leftover base model, back in 2009, at the bottom of the recession. If they couldn't move a base model then, there is about no chance that 10 years of economic progress later, that people are interested in those models, right?
Yeah that is related but not the same. I think agricultural equipment is not the same as cars. The closest thing would be the price of trucks. I always thought farmers happily paid 6 figures for big equipment and just wrote off as necessary and/or made payments. However, it is not surprising that there is a limit. Historically, I suspect that buying a new tractor every once in a while made business sense for a production farm. But at some point, the price and non-farmer-friendly systems tilted the tables back in favor of used equipment. I totally get that. Fortunately if this is wide spread enough, the market will respond.
On the other hand, this just means that tractors are entering an era that is similar to where cars were in the 80s when EFI and computers were being introduced. LOTS of complaints about specialized equipment, difficult or impossible DIY repairs. This sounds familiar. The repair market and DIY market caught up. It takes time.
This is a little misleading without going into more detail:
For many years, independent car repair chains fought a similar development in the automotive world, and in 2014, automakers agreed to a right-to-repair deal, making access to diagnostic tools standard across the industry. Since tractors don’t have similar legislation concerning their repair, farmers are going to lengths such as gaining access to the tractors’ software through Ukrainian firmware to make repairs.
What is the implication, that cars before 2014 are too proprietary to diagnose and repair? BS, that is not true.
It is interesting to think of large tech companies (or their lobbyists) visiting Nebraska to tell farmers they shouldn't have access to the special John Deere software to run diags on their tractors, flash modules, etc.
It is bigger than just tractors, as well. I hope this goes somewhere.
Side note and I can move this if it blossoms, but the median household income in 1971 according to the US Census was $9,027. With a price of $3,757 for that 240Z, that is 41.6% of the median household income.
In 2019 (actually 1 year ago), the median household income was $63,688. If we multiply that by the percentage of household income that 240Z cost in 1971, I come up with a car price of $26,500, or only $1,000 more than the inflation adjusted price of that 240Z (probably not a coincidence since these are sort of the fundamentals that drive all of these calculations). But my point is, the base price of a Toyota 86 is $26,655 so we are really still in exactly the same ball park here.
So either cars have not really gotten more expensive, or the 240Z was actually kind of pricey. I guess one could simply look at the prices of other cars in 1971 and figure that out, but I thought the pitch for the 240Z was it was a perfectly affordable car with perfectly decent performance (with above average handling) with 200k of driveline durability (minus corrosion resistance).
The analysts at Kelley Blue Book today reported the estimated average transaction price for a light vehicle in the United States was $36,590 in February 2019.
So between 57 and 58% of household income. That is a big increase from 41.6%.