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AUTOMATION AND MACHINERY
Australian farmers are key to the energy transition
By Shaun Westcott
From already feeding the world to now also potentially saving it, Australian farmers are in a unique position to harness advanced automotive and renewal energy technologies to both lift their on-farm productivity and profitability while also combatting climate change.
On the electric vehicle front, the future is closer but still not fully within reach, especially for farmers. Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) have yet to provide prac- tical solutions for rural Australia. While there are a few electric utes on the market, their high cost and limited range — especially when towing — make them impractical. One electric ute boasts a range of 410 kilometres, but when tow- ing a 3,200 kilograms trailer, that plummets to just 140 kilometres. And it costs well north of $100,000 – that’s not middle Australia. Until there’s a major breakthrough in battery technology, internal com- bustion utes and hybrids will re- main the most viable option for farmers and tradies. An exciting technology currently available in the SUV range and soon making its way into utes is
while navigating fields. The advantage of farm ma- chinery is that it operates in a controlled environment. For pas- senger vehicles, the challenge is greater. While many modern cars are already capable of some ele- ments of “self-driving” such as Forward Collision Mitigation and other Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, legislation and the com- plexity of public roads hold back this potential. Cars do not yet com- municate with each other or with infrastructure like traffic lights, making autonomous driving on public roads still considered a high- risk proposition. For this technol- ogy to be adopted more broadly, governments globally need to in- vest in smart infrastructure that can support the algorithms and data demands of a fully connected road system.
Australia’s, and indeed the world’s, current focus on the energy transi- tion is essential, as climate change remains one of our greatest chal- lenges. The future will undoubt- edly feature mostly autonomous, battery-powered vehicles. But as science fiction author William Gib- son famously said, “The Future Has Arrived — It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed Yet.” Growing up on a farm in South Africa, I dreamed of future tech- nologies while driving anything with a steering wheel and a gear- box from a young age. Fast for- ward to 2024, and amidst all the buzz around futuristic self-driv- ing cars, Australian farmers have quietly been using autonomous technology for years. Autono- mous tractors, for example, are highly effective at mapping farms and avoiding fences and trees
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