Electric John Deere Tractor | Student conversion | 72V Lithium

One of the students who helped convert a tractor to electric gives us a brief tour! Please click SHOW MORE!
Students at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville, converted a John Deere 2025R to electric. Mechanical engineering student, Mitchell Schaefer, gives us an overview of the project. We get to go under the hood to see batteries, controller, and more.
Specs in short:
John Deere 2025R with Hydrostatic drive. Original drive, PTO, and 3 point kept as stock.
Nissan Leaf Cell Modules - 10 in series
Motenergy ME1003 Electric motor
Daly 20S/72V 200 BMS
25A DC-DC Converter (NO 12V battery used!)
Kelly controller
120V/12A Charger
Conversion cost was approximately $2,500 - that's less than the cost of a replacement engine.
Although it's a small battery pack, it fully powers the system and demonstrates the proof-of-concept. A small pack kept the project on budget. The battery compartment is designed to support 3 or 4 times as many batteries.
We also recorded the student's Senior Design Presentation, which you can see here: • Electric John Deere Tr...
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[@badgerdad777]

My brother went to UWP. Great to see them do this project.

[@chrissscottt]

Nice. The young dude presented the project well too.

[@GoCoyote]

Great to see these projects taking off. I suspect that aftermarket conversions for tractors will be an important part of industry in a few years.

[@vichy7661]

I totally appreciate your conversion info, especially mainstream the existing drive/cutting/hydraulics. Isolating the motor from the actual drive seems to be a plus, it removes any sudden impacts from the motors. Great job!

[@chargingcycles2241]

SHOUT OUT To Wisconsin's own Motoenergy !! Those versatile motors find themselves in projects everywhere. So of course we find them here.

[@bikeplatt]

They were very helpful and were able to ship the motor across the state within a day. They provided helpful resources for information as well.

[@Aquatendo]

As an electrical engineer, I wish I could’ve done this as a senior design project. Instead, my team just made a pcb add on to turn a raspberry pi into a slightly functioning oscilloscope.

[@frmath2]

Congrats to all. I wish I could make something like this.

[@motormaker]

Interesting. It will be cool to see it when it is finished.

[@mildrednafula-hp4eu]

I'm impressed with the technology

[@BennySuds]

So cool! Hopefully John Deere will make an electric tractor soon!

[@tomkrause62]

"Load" as in actually mowing, or just driving the tractor around the yard? 2HP and a deep cycle will drive it around, the big power comes when it's time to cut grass.

[@randyeller8139]

Been wanting to do this with a smaller hydrostatic mower just so I could eliminate a motor controller and have less electronics to go pop. Really clean layout and would love to see the finished mower!

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

We had discussed the idea of going completely WITHOUT a motor speed controller. Although the students did not choose to go that way, I think it would still be a perfectly acceptable way to go with this type of a setup.

[@kevinjpluck]

Unbidden image of John Travolta saying "Well, this car is automatic, it's systematic, it's hydromatic"...

[@rjung_ch]

He's right, it's the future.

[@simonc2696]

Great project! Suggestion for a follow up to make it autonomous? Sure more potential now having speed controlled electric drive

[@traktorsuper]

Super canggih dan modern

[@raptormatt21]

Cool project, but slightly concerning that a mechanical engineer doesn't understand how the hydrostatic transmission works 🥴.

[@kennypool]

Did you see the dual rotational cylinder hydrogen engine 160 hp 200 torque. Engine weight 48 lbs. Sounds really good. Who knows?

[@AndrewTinWA]

@Benjamin your original DC car vid series encouraged me to try it out. I have set up the Same basic 72V system as your Geo Metro, but with Curtis controller. I just noticed I have used the exact same motor the students did in this small tractor. I haven't got it driving yet but fear it may be too small a motor. The vehicle is only 650kg in curb weight in stock form with original petrol motor, a tiny 5spd Daihatsu. What do you think? Thanks again for the inspiration!

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

I guess that I would say at this point to just drive it! Have some instrumentation so you know how much current you are drawing and what your voltage is. For a small and light car, driven reasonably, that motor may be just fine. I used the smaller 48V version in my electric motorcycle and it worked well. If you are just driving in the city, it may be just fine. If you find out that the motor doesn't perform as you would like, at least you now have the experience of working on an electric vehicle and you can look into finding a more powerful motor with which to upgrade. If you are in Washington state, there tends to be a pretty good EV culture there, and I'm sure you can make some new friends to talk shop about EVs and maybe even find a used motor that will fit the bill. www.myeva.org/chapter-list

[@jamesglenn2006]

Awesome project, the young students just need to brush up on Hydraulics and the absence of clutches and conventional transmission parts in a hydrostatic transmission.

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

I think he was just trying to make a simplified metaphor to a traditional automotive manual transmission.

[@designbuilddrive]

Ben is correct, it is more like a torque converter in an automatic transmission rather than a clutch.

[@designbuilddrive]

HEY! That's me lol.

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

Cool. Now I can watch your LS engine videos!

[@designbuilddrive]

@@BenjaminNelsonX If there are a ton of questions I can do a Zoom call or something to answer some questions for another video.

[@selvakumarg6269]

Hi mr.benjamin. I need some help. I have plan for my petrol car hybrid to electric car. Please tell me some suggestions

[@davidtipton7234]

Put a brushog behind it. I wanna see it work. And how long will it mow on charge.

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

I'd love to see that too. The tractor was donated to the project, but not any accessories, such a tow-behind mower. I'll try to follow up with a future video when this tractor is used with some accessories, instead of just a quick demo at the college.

[@whalen83]

@@BenjaminNelsonX Hey Ben, do you own the tractor? I'm a former UWP student and I still live in the area. I have a few 3pt implements and an interest in BEVs. If you'd like to try it out doing some real work sometime let me know. Do you have an email address I can contact you at?

[@BenjaminNelsonX]

@@whalen83 Hi, I am NOT the owner of the tractor, but could put you in contact with who is. You can contact me through 300MPG.org

[@careyfrennier347]

One of your front tires is backwards :P Very cool though!

[@bikeplatt]

Was wondering if anyone would notice. The shop mounted them the week prior to this and we didn’t have time to have them swap it.

[@mosfet500]

Thanks for the video. I think your electric motor is too big, you can probably run that tractor as well as the diesel with an 8hp motor electric - 22 x 746 = 16.4kW; ~6kW for 8 hp. What's you battery voltage? It's not a one to one power ratio, the electric has a constant torque band, the diesel doesn't. With 8hp you'll get over an hour run time and the pumps will still give you all you need to run the hydraulics. With a smaller motor you'll also have more room for batteries. Also I'd run LiFePo4's. Less dense but who cares, it's a tractor. The hydrostatic also drops your efficiency, better off with a gearbox and varying the motor speed, especially with the torque of the electric, better combo.

[@VenerableBede2510]

I’m pretty concerned that a graduate student in engineering, thinks a hydrostatic transmission is a “clutch”

[@BOTTLEDZ28]

4 hours to charge just to get 20-30 minutes of use in its current build form. Even Another bank of batteries wouldnt make this ideal on a job site.....unless you are taking a lot of beer breaks.

[@extragoode]

That's just with a basic 1.3kw (110v*12A) trickle charger. They said it was running about 3.6kw (72v*50A) under normal load, so with a little more time and effort, like would be done on a production model, it'd probably be able to charge as much as twice as fast as it's drained. The goal for Senior design (not production) projects is often just to get it to work.

[@Akcd11r2002]

Ok…. Now hook up an implement to it and do some actual real work… report your findings.

[@randyeller8139]

Been wanting to do this with a smaller hydrostatic mower just so I could eliminate a motor controller and have less electronics to go pop. Really clean layout and would love to see the finished mower!