Living in China, it has been quite incredible to witness how quickly consumers are moving towards electric vehicles. International car manufacturers have been caught flat-footed and have lost 20% market share to electric cars in the past two years alone. Chinese brands such as BYD, Nio, Xpeng, and the US brand Tesla are ubiquitous. Buying an electric car in China has become the obvious and sensible choice. Indeed, the Irish Embassy in Beijing is also making the move to go electric.

For people in Ireland, the move to electric vehicles is still not an obvious decision and the range of factors impacting the decision, cost, range, driving preference and particularly the charging infrastructure, remain a factor. For businesses, some of these constraints shouldn’t exist and, in theory, there is an opportunity for the farming sector to be a pioneer in the adoption of electric vehicles.

Globally, while robotics are continuing to drive further automation in milking cows, the move to electric machinery will likely be a major trend in feeding cattle over the next decade. There are already early movers in this space in the global market and some interesting concepts were exhibited last November at Eurotier Technica in Germany. Recently, I met a company in China called Red2V that has developed an electric feed-out truck that can both mix a ration or simply feed out a ration from a truck with a capacity of up to 30 cubic metres. This type of truck also has self-drive capability and has some potential advantages for larger farmers around the world. The feed-out truck can work for 10 hours straight and a mixer wagon will go for about six hours before requiring a 1.5 hour charge and seems to be reasonably priced, which will ultimately be a key factor in uptake for feeder wagons.

Given that the use of solar panels and anaerobic digesters is becoming more prevalent on-farm, electricity is more often than not both cheaper and more sustainable than using diesel. According to the Chinese company’s calculations, if a 1,000-cow unit moves to electric feed-out trucks, it will offer a saving of 25,500l of diesel per annum, or a saving of approximately €27,000. Clearly, there is a nice potential to reduce carbon emissions by going electric, and for a 1,000-cow unit it could mean a saving of 60t of carbon. Other benefits of going electric would be to have reduced labour (autopilot), quieter machinery causing less stress to cows and can feed more often, which can drive further performance.

Aside from feeding, types of electric base units can also be potentially used for slurry spreading, zero grazing machines and even for trailers. Maybe even a multi-purpose base unit could be an option for a typical farm in Ireland. In terms of electric tractors, there are some interesting options on the global market from some of the main players, as well as US-based start-up companies like Monarch. Chinese options are also coming into the market gradually, such as YTO, but the electric tractor space seems to be wide open at the moment. Another company worth watching is Bluewhite, which is working on autonomous driving and can be installed onto existing tractors.

Milk collections

Milk collection is showing signs of going electric. In late 2022, Fonterra announced the utilisation of Chinese technology from XCMG a construction machinery company to create ‘Milk-e’, which seems to be the world’s first electric milk collection truck. Since that announcement, both Yili and Mengniu are going electric.

Mengniu has partnered with Deepway to launch its first milk collection trucks.

Many portray China’s industrial policies, which have created huge capacity for developing electric vehicles as being unfair or uncompetitive. I believe that in agriculture we should focus on the opportunities that these technologies and supply chain capabilities could bring to our sector. It’s a great chance for traditional machinery suppliers and co-ops to collaborate and innovate to bring new, electric clean technology options to the market.