A four-country test team from Future Farming's partner titles has run a battery-electric Fendt e107 Vario alongside its diesel counterpart, the Fendt 207 Vario, for two weeks in winter conditions in Norway and summer conditions in the Netherlands. Their verdict: the electric tractor is already surprisingly mature — stronger, quieter and smoother than the diesel — but battery capacity remains the limit for heavy work.

The e107 replaces the diesel engine with a 100 kWh battery pack (about 95 kWh usable, roughly 600 kg) on a 750-volt system and a 500-volt AC motor driving the same AGCO ML75 Vario transmission as the diesel. It is only 220 kg heavier and costs about €60,000 more. Three modes are offered: Eco (68 hp), Dynamic (75 hp) and a one-minute Dynamic Plus boost to 90 hp.

Runtime depends heavily on the job. Heavy PTO work — a 3-metre Kuhn rotary tiller, for which Kuhn recommends 100 hp — drained the battery in two to two-and-a-half hours, while lighter tasks such as sweeping, sand spreading and loader work ran for seven hours or more. Road range was about 75 km whether in the Norwegian hills with a light load or on the flat with a 10-tonne trailer.

Efficiency was the clearest win. Tilling for 30 minutes used 5 litres of diesel and 0.3 litres of AdBlue in the 207 against 21.2 kWh in the e107; moving 272 pallets in 30 minutes took 1.98 litres of diesel against 7.5 kWh. Across the work the electric tractor needed about 42% of the energy the diesel did, consistent with a diesel engine turning around 40% of its fuel into work. The team's rule of thumb: one litre of diesel equals 3.8 kWh in light loader work and up to 4.3 kWh in heavy field work.

The e107 was measurably quieter — 67.2 dB(A) against 69.6 at top speed in the cab, and 78 dB(A) against 92.4 when driven past at full throttle three metres away — and it warmed its cab three degrees faster in ten minutes, helped by underfloor heating. Complaints were shared with the diesel: a steering wheel that is too large and brake pedals that need a lot of force. Front-loader work felt slightly less precise on the electric because the motor responds faster at low speed.

Charging is AC up to 22 kW or DC fast charging on 800-volt infrastructure, 20 to 80% in about 45 minutes; 400-volt car chargers cannot be used, though Fendt supplies a mobile 40 kW DC unit. In Norway the team managed on a 7.6 kW farm charger, charging overnight and topping up at lunch. Below 20% charge the display turns red and power is capped; at 0% the tractor stops about two and a half minutes later.

For the magazine the test also points to autonomous field robots, which need no driver or heated cab and can be designed around an electric drivetrain from the outset. Even setting price and battery capacity aside, the whole test team said it would prefer the electric tractor; both issues, they add, may improve with time. The authors were Tapio Vesterinen (Koneviesti, Finland), Magnus Sørlie (Bedre Gardsdrift, Norway), Jonas R. Gade (TraktorTech, Denmark) and Bob Karsten (TREKKER, Netherlands).

Source: Future Farming