Americas First Electric Tractor Company BANKRUPT...Why?

bankrupt. I stick with my diesel. Folks, today's video on the Stony Ridge Farm, we're going to let it rip. Oh yeah, we're rolling now, boys. Please share your thoughts today, guys. Share your thoughts. I'd love to know what you think about the electric tractor. Today, we're going to be talking about this elephant in the room. And this elephant is made in the USA and bankrupt. Bankrupt. The electric tractor company that was solely electrical, Select Track, has gone bankrupt. Let's talk a little bit about it and why I think it went bankrupt. And I want you guys to share your opinions. Stony Farm. All right. All right, folks. Welcome back to the Stony Ridge Farm channel. If this is your first time here, thank you for coming. If this is your 50 millionth time, thank you for coming. Hit that like button, subscribe to the channel. Love to have you back here. This is a Select Track tractor. This is, as far as I know, America's first all electric tractor brand. Select Track. Select Track is a subsidiary of a company called Idionomics. Ideomics has gone bankrupt. Did the Select Track tractor make Ideomics go bankrupt? I don't know. I honestly don't know. I do know that I had one of these tractors on the farm for around a year, a year and a half, something like that. I used this tractor. I really used this tractor. I worked it. I carried round hay bales to feed my cows. I worked the driveway up. I worked in the pastures. I worked in the garden. This was a cool little tractor. And if you don't know what it is, it's called the Select Track Tractor. It is a Circa 25 horsepower electric all-electric tractor. There are a few key features on this tractor that I think contributed to the demise of the Select Track brand or the Select Track company. And I don't know if they're going to bring the Select Track brand back uh in another way or if the company is gone for good. If the company is gone for good, I really hate it for those of you who bought one of these machines. I don't know what the warranty status is going to be on it. I honestly don't. You'll have to reach out to your dealer. I don't know. I don't know if you're going to take it on the chin. I I just don't know. Now, I've heard about a few problems with these tractors in the past. And I do know if you want an electric tractor, you can buy a select track for a whole lot cheaper now than what they went for brand new. So, brand new, this little 25 horsepower subcompact or compact tractor went for around $35,000. Comparable tractors in the 25 horsepower range like the uh RK25 or little John Deere 1025, I believe, is is the John Deere. This tractor was more than $10,000 more expensive with the loader setup like this than the comparable diesel tractors. And I think that is probably our number one reason why Select Track is no more. And I can't say that I blame people for not wanting to spend that much money on technology that really is improving rapidly over and faster and faster and faster all the time. So when you bought this tractor, you had to scratch your head a little bit and wonder, is it going to be outdated soon? Instead of an engine under the hood, there is a battery pack. Instead of an engine driving the drivetrain, there are two pumps. I do believe one pump runs the hydraulics and one pump runs the rest of the tractor. The loader is super strong. It will pick up hay bales. It did great. I had it out in one of my pastures nearly all winter long and fed hay bales nearly all winter on one single charge. It's designed to run around 4 hours on one single charge, which is fine for a yard tractor, for a small compact tractor like this. You're not going to be doing row crop work with this tractor. That 4 hours is at full bore. So, in other words, I hooked a mowing deck up to it, a bush hog deck, brush hog, whatever you want to call it, and I mowed and at full blast, 4 hours is what I could get. If I'm just driving around and carrying material in the bucket, I really couldn't tell you how long the battery lasts. Like I said, almost an entire winter just moving hay bells. All I did was just pull up to a hay bell, lift it up, take it to the cows, drop it. That was it. It wouldn't burn a whole lot of power that way. And it lasted a long, long time. I didn't have to warm up an engine. That's that's why I liked it. I do think that we as a community of farmers and homesteaders and folks that just need a little compact tractor like this in their backyard. I think that we as a community are going to start leaning towards electric tractors and electrification services due for like 250 to 400 hours, something like that. I like that. I liked the tractor. The tractor was strong. The tractor was heavy. Now, for electric vehicles, the heavy is cumbersome and the heavy eats up energy. But for a tractor, heavy is good. It makes it more planted. It makes it more stable. It makes it be able to pick up more. I was a huge fan of this tractor. The second thing that I think may have caused an issue. Uh there is a battery under the hood and then there's a tiny auxiliary battery that sits under there. If you park this tractor in your backyard or in your garage and you don't have it plugged in for several months, you will have a problem with that smaller 12volt battery. And that smaller 12volt battery engages everything to do evidently with the charging system on this machine. So at one point, and some other owners experienced this too, I went to plug it in to charge it, it wouldn't take charge. Why wouldn't it take charge? I couldn't figure it out. Well, that little 12volt battery had gone bad. This tractor is about 3 years old and it's on its third little 12volt battery. Now, another problem that these tractors had is the screen. Sometimes the screen on these tractors and the body of it is made by Farm Track and I believe it's outfitted by Select Track with all the electricals and electronics. Well, these screens tend to have a problem. They get kind of kind of pixelated, I guess, is the word for it. They're not very complex, but there are problems with the screen, and the screen is what tells you how much charge you have, how fast you're going, all that stuff, all that information that you need, and that screen's right on the dashboard. The final thing, I think the nail in the coffin with this tractor, aside from the price, that's a nail in the coffin. $35,000 is a lot to fork over uh without a government subsidy for an electric tractor. 35 grand is is very expensive. But the next bad thing was you had to be moving. So like with old farmall tractors of yester year of the 1950s and60s, you had to be moving in order for the blades on your mower deck to work. or if you put a roto tiller behind this, you'd have to be moving. So, you couldn't engage your tiller or your mowing deck or anything was PTO driven by the rear of this tractor. You couldn't engage it unless the tractor was moving forward. That posed a lot of problems. You have to mow in an extremely low gear. In order to mow, you've got to really, really creep. I'm talking like 2 m an hour in order to mow for the tractor to have enough power to cut through grass, you know, that was as tall as the hood on that tractor. It just kind of bogged down and it would eat up and consume a ton of energy if you weren't going super super slow. So, you could go really fast and mow and it would run out of energy in two hours. And a good friend of mine, Tractor Time with Tim, did some reviews on this tractor. Also, the way this tractor works is not up to what I would consider current standards of small compact tractors like this. So, I want you guys, you know, you see all the footage of me running this machine and doing various chores around the farm. I want you guys to share your opinion. Now, our current administration bashed everything electrical. Uh they they didn't like the idea of an electric tractor or an electric car or an electric tank. And you know, I understand that. Uh but I do think it does have a place and I think the technology is going to get better and better and better. And I do believe that running this small tractor for a small homestead or a smaller farm, I think it could be a good choice if it were more affordable, if it were more reliable, if it had a very strong warranty because we'd all be scared to buy it, and if the price was normal and not 15 grand more, 10 to 15 grand more than a standard tractor. I'll keep you guys posted on the channel as to what happens. I'm not sure if Select Track is going to go back into business and they're going to start selling tractors again. I'm not sure what happens with your warranty. I'm not sure what happens when you need service. I'm not sure what happens when you need parts. And you know, I really really believed in the technology. When I tried it, I thought it was cool. I thought it was awesome. I still believe in the technology, but I think we've got to get a little more advanced with this machine and make it a little more affordable in order for it to work for the common man, for the common person. The average person is not going to go out and spend $35,000 on a subcompact 25 horsepower tractor. That's just one step over a lawn tractor. And you can get a belly mower for this and mow your yard and do all that stuff. Um, I just I just don't think I think the stars aligned in the absolute wrong way for this little tractor. And I think politics had something to do with it. Price was huge, a huge factor. The fact that it has an antiquated PTO system and the fact that that little battery caused problems and caused hiccups for people. We want to be able to walk out and get in our tractor, start it up, and go. And the Select Track tractor didn't meet all those requirements. It just didn't. If you're going to till up your garden, you need to start that tiller before you drop it in the dirt and start moving forward. That's not what this tractor is designed to do. You're going to mow a pasture, you need to make sure your your PTO is spinning, your blades are spinning, you got that torque. Now, it's full of torque. It's loaded with torque, but you had to mow in a really, really low and slow speed. So, that's the Select Track tractor, guys. I wanted to share this with you. They have Idenomics, the parent company of Select Track, has gone bankrupt. I think we predicted this in a video about maybe about a year ago, something like that. I really hate it. It's an American company. It's made in the USA. And it's kind of heartbreaking to see the first iteration of new technology fail like this. What do you guys think? Do you have empathy for Select Track? Do you does it make you mad to even consider an electric tractor? Tell me what you think. Is it something you'd be excited about if you could get it for a more affordable price? Say this tractor was, I don't know, 18,000 bucks. Would it be something that you'd be interested in? If it had a 10-year warranty and it was 18 grand, would you do it? What about if it had a 15-year warranty and it was 25 grand? Bumper to bumper. I'd jump all over it. I mean, I would jump all over it. This tractor never was plugged in to the grid when I owned it. It was always charged via solar. So, I never ever incurred a fuel cost with this tractor. A small tractor like this, you're probably not going to put but 20, 15 hours on it a year, maybe 30 hours a year. This is a tractor you wouldn't have to service for five or six years. I think that's really cool. Tell me what you think, guys. There are pluses and minuses. Give me a positive and give me a negative. I'd love to hear from you down in the comments. Thank you so much for watching the Stony Ridge Farm channel today. It breaks my heart to say it, but the little blue guy is little bye-bye. It's really sad. I'll let you guys know if I hear anything else about Select Track Tractors, if they are going back into business or you guys let me know if you hear anything about them. Thank you so much. Hit that like button. We'll see you next time on the Stony Ridge Farm. Please share your thoughts today, guys. Share your thoughts. I'd love to know what you think about the electric tractor after we've talked about it here. See you. Woo! Come on down. Bring your wife and bring your kids. We're living life pure and sweet. That's the way it's supposed to be. Stony Ridge. Select track. Okay. So, track select. Solctric track. How do you say it again? Select. Select track. Select track. Okay. Okay. So, select track. You ain't pulling that 4,000lb tractor. Is he going to pull me out by bare [Music] hand? How's your uh health insurance plan? Pretty good. Don't mess up my grass. Yep. It automatically shuts off after 20 seconds. So, yeah. See, at the end it goes, it ain't moving anymore. Josh, something's wrong.