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Though tractors have addressed the problem of shortage of labour, high costs of ownership and operation still make it difficult for farming community in acquiring them.
A Hyderabad-based start-up Cellestial E-Mobility have come up with an operational prototype of an electric tractor that costs less than the traditional diesel-run tractors.
The start-up targets a lucrative market of 8.78 lakh-unit tractor market (2019) in the country. “The market is growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.9 per cent. We found that the electric manufacturers of vehicles have not focussed on this segment yet,” Siddarth Durairajan, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cellestial E-Mobility, said.
Priced at ₹5 lakh
“It costs ₹5 lakh a piece as against ₹6 lakh that the regular tractor is priced at. Moreover, it will cost ₹20-35 to run the e-tractor for an hour as against ₹150 that the farmers spend every hour that they use,” Durairajan said.
The beauty of the product is that it comes without about 300 parts that come along with the regular tractor engine. It will help them save time and effort on maintaining the vehicle.
The firm, which began its operations in 2019, raised $2,00,000 from a Singapore-based Angel Investor.
Initially, the start-up is planning to produce 100 units a month in the first year. “We will ramp up the production in the next 2-3 three years to produce an aggregate 8,000 vehicles,” he said.
Besides targeting the farm sector, the start-up is also looking at selling the tractor to factories, warehouses and airports for movement of goods and baggage.
Specifications
The tractor comes with features such as battery swapping, regenerative braking, power inversion (use the tractor to power a UPS), and fast charging.
The 6HP electric tractor (which the start-up claims is equivalent to 21HP diesel tractor) can run 75 km on a single charge. It can go at a speed of 20 km an hour.
“In a residential environment, it takes six hours to fully charge the battery and with an industrial power sockets, it can fast-charge in two hours,” Syed Mubasheer Ali, Co-Founder and Partner, Cellestial E-Mobility, said.
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