(19 Sep 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
East Lansing, Michigan – 19 August 2025
1. Wide of electric tractor during demonstration
2. Medium of people watching demonstration
3. Wide of electric tractor driving
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Ajit Srivastava, professor, Michigan State University:
"So this is an electric tractor, especially designed to meet the needs of Michigan’s specialty crop industry for a source of sustainable energy, sustainable power. It’s designed to be a utility tractor which can run on, if needed to be, on solar power or regular electrical energy for weeding operations primarily. Every farm has to have a tractor that they can use for multiple usage.”
5. Various aerial of electric tractor during demonstration ++MUTE++
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Ajit Srivastava, professor, Michigan State University:
"You need a large tractor for primary tillage, but you till once. But you do a lot of other operations, like weeding, spraying, that are light-energy operations. So you do those many, many times. So that’s why we focused on light-duty tractors, because they are used a lot more often.”
7. Various of Ajit Srivastava speaking during electric tractor demonstration
8. Wide of Don Dunklee climbing into electric tractor cab for test drive
9. Cutaway of Don Dunklee in electric tractor cab
10. Cutaway of Don Dunklee pushing electric tractor pedal
11. Wide of Don Dunklee driving electric tractor
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Don Dunklee, specialty crop farmer:
"We want to get everything electric on the farm, and tractor’s the last electric implement to get.”
13. Various details of electric motor
14. Detail of self-driving and GPS electronics
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Don Dunklee, specialty crop farmer:
"For cultivating on a farm, it would do a really good job. For my particular farm, I don’t know that it would work because I do so many other tasks that aren’t related to the actual growing, like hauling lumber, cutting woods, dragging logs, digging holes. And this tractor wouldn’t do that, but the work that they’re doing on this tractor is absolutely phenomenal. I can see down the road how great this can be when they get the project done.”
16. Detail of electric tractor and weeding implement
17. Cutaway of tire tracks
18. Wide of electric tractor driving inside arena
19. SOUNDBITE (English) Don Dunklee, specialty crop farmer:
"I’ll be happy to see next year when they have more of the development along, especially on the electronic side of it. Be happy to see what they come up with over time. I know it’s a development in progress, and like it should be, there’s always going to be glitches. My farm’s been glitches the whole life, so when there’s a glitch, you fix it.”
20. Wide of people inspecting electric tractor during demonstration
21. Wide of electric tractor driving in arena
STORYLINE:
Agriculture is among the largest sources of climate-warming emissions in the U.S. Though tractors are a small culprit, experts believe an environmentally friendly machine would still attract buyers interested in sustainability.
At an August event, researchers at Michigan State University asked farmers what they think of a new electric tractor. The market is so new they’re still trying to figure out if they’ve designed it well enough to excite growers of specialty crops like carrots, asparagus and blueberries.
The small, battery-powered machine isn’t meant to replace the giant diesel tractors used on big commercial soy or corn operations. Powerful enough technology for that could be decades away.
(AP Video by Joshua A. Bickel)
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Author: AP Archive
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