Spanish agtech start-up Voltrac has confirmed that its Thor autonomous electric robot is moving into pre-series production. The current Thor 2, recently demonstrated at a robotics event in Berlin, is what its founders call a pre-serial vehicle; the Thor 3 that follows is to be the first production-ready version. Voltrac plans to build 96 units a year at its 1,200-square-metre factory in Valencia as a first phase, with longer-term plans for 1,000 vehicles a year.

The Thor is not a diesel tractor with an electric motor dropped in. Voltrac designed it around autonomy from the start and removed the gearbox, oil filters, radiators and other parts prone to leaks and failure. "By just removing them and electrifying, all we have is cables, instead of complex mechanisms," says co-founder Francisco Infante Aguirre. The machine has roughly 70% fewer components than a conventional tractor.

Each of the four wheels has its own electric motor and reduction box, giving 20,000 newton-metres of wheel torque and tight turning circles, which matters in orchards and vineyards where headland space is short. If one motor fails the other three carry on — "It's a workhorse. It has to carry on pushing," Infante Aguirre says — and each motor unit can be removed with two bolts, with replacements shipped straight to the farm.

Power comes from hot-swappable battery packs giving up to 20 hours of continuous work; rather than charging in the field, operators carry a second set and swap in minutes. Voltrac is also partnering with solar-panel makers to offer off-grid charging. Hydraulics are kept for now so that existing implements fit, but the company expects to phase them out as implements go electric. A standard three-point hitch means farmers need buy nothing new.

On board are two compute modules — one for functional safety, one a CPU-GPU pair for machine learning — with stereo cameras front and rear and mono cameras on the sides, so that every pass can be used to monitor crop health, spot disease early and fine-tune fertiliser and chemical inputs. Third-party developers can run their own applications on the robot, which Voltrac sees as a marketplace for field-level tools. Connectivity is by dual SIM and Starlink, with a remote teleoperator always available, and GPS precision is about 5 cm.

The operating model is one person supervising several vehicles across several fields at once. Voltrac intends to keep production in Valencia — "the talent is here, the precision manufacturing is here, the know-how is here," Infante Aguirre says — and with the Thor 3 as the immediate target is moving from demonstration to delivery.

Source: Future Farming