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Read the entire transcript from the latest episode.
Tony Kramer: Hi, I'm Tony Kramer, your host of the Agriculture Technology Podcast. In this episode, I talk with Buddy Kavalier about John Deere's research in ethanol powered ag equipment. I'm really excited to learn more. But before we do that, Buddy, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got to where you are today.
Harold (Buddy) Kavalier: Well, it's great to be here today, Tony. I appreciate you allowing the opportunity for John Deere to come in and talk a little bit about our project here.
A bit of background on myself, I've been with John Deere power systems for 27 years now. So, I spent a little less than half of that working in IT, moved from there into customer support. I was a warranty administration manager for external engine sales. And I've held four different roles now in sales and marketing.
So, been with the company through a lot of different changes and transitions. This (ethanol tractors) was one of the ones actually I was pretty actively involved in. One of the ones that kind of helped try to lead and get us moving in the direction to look at this market opportunity.
I do farm and I think that's what, for me, it's a little more, we'll say interesting and tied directly to what I do. I run a small family farm. In fact, our family farm has been in the family for about 113 years now. And I've just recently started this year kind of taking that over. I'm officially farming it. My uncle always kind of did the actual farming in terms of everything running through his name, but this year will be the first time it's through mine. So, my connection with ag is pretty heavy. I spend all my free time literally revolving around tractors, equipment and anything related to farming practices. That's where I kind of fall into. So again, appreciate you allowing us to come in today to talk a little bit.
Tony: Absolutely. And, like we were talking before we hit the record button here, we were kind of talking that this research and this solution (ethanol tractor). You guys at John Deere, you're looking at the big picture and you coming from the power side of John Deere, you're not directly tied to tractors or combines or whatever it may be. You guys work with the power system.
So, let's start from the beginning. We had mentioned, you know, ethanol powered ag equipment. Obviously we're used to, you know, gas powered engines, diesel powered engines. But you bring that term ethanol into the mix. Tell us a little bit about how this project came to be, and a little bit of the background on why John Deere decided to pursue this, this market opportunity.
Buddy: So, in 2000, I was in a role where effectively, any opportunities from an engine perspective rolled up through my, my lane. Effectively, I worked to get the engine and the high horsepower 8R prior to that high horsepower 9R. So, it's anything engine related would funnel through me. I had one of the gentlemen I was working with, in fact, he was in the role I'm currently in now, which is recombination of research strategist and ethanol awareness champion, effectively brought this forward to me and said, “Hey, we should take a little look at ethanol.”
So, we started digging in. This was around 2020, started digging in pretty heavily and trying to figure out what we could produce for power, trying to see if this would potentially meet customer needs. At the time, we really were seeking a lower carbon intensity fuel. So that was a big driver. But we also knew that ethanol had a lot of potential in large ag. And that's really what kind of put us on the on the tracks here to kind of keep working towards advancing ethanol, finding a solution that meets our customer needs and promotes the ag industry. Really, biofuels are incredibly important and impactful to green farmers. And so, we wanted to enable a solution that would be beneficial to their operations.
Tony: Yeah. And so, you talked about going back. I mean, this has been in the works for a while. You said 2020, you guys really went down the path of diving in deep. What drew you to ethanol as a realistic alternative solution?
Buddy: Yeah. We realized from a customer perspective, carbon intensity isn't top of mind. That's exactly where it's at on our (John Deere) farming operations.
So, we knew that we needed a fuel that really added customer value. And what ethanol does from an end customer perspective, we've had a lot of comments and concerns on using deaf. Well, ethanol doesn't require diesel exhaust fluid. So that is a is a huge advantage with ethanol.
By the way, we generate very little particulate matter, almost none. And therefore, we need no reagents, which is also another pain point for customers.
For after treatment systems, ethanol also offers potential for lower cost fuel. What I would say normally I would expect to see a 15 to 30 percent savings. Right now, it's pretty phenomenal. And that has a lot to do with market dynamics, where that's something we can dig a little bit into as we kind of get a little further into the conversation, but we also have lower carbon intensity.
And really it comes down to it's a renewable fuel that our customers are providing the feedstock for (farmers growing corn) and we think there'd be a lot of value in customers burning more ethanol in their operations, providing that that makes sense to bring this solution to market.
Tony: Yeah, that's where my mind goes right away thinking about the customers that are growing the corn, that are potentially sending that corn to a local ethanol plant or something like that,. It's the corn farmers of the world that are making that ethanol, making that product to produce that ethanol. So that's where my mind definitely goes is the ability for these growers to essentially produce their own fuel for their farm.
Now, obviously, ethanol engine versus the traditional diesel engine that we're used to, I would assume there's differences. You mentioned a couple of them with the carbon emissions that no diesel exhaust fluid, things like that. Tell us exactly, you know, kind of from top to bottom, is this a whole completely different engine, or what makes this engine different from diesel that is going to allow customers to get kind of the same outcome as a diesel engine?
Buddy: Yeah. So maybe just to give a little bit of background or context on the engine that we've chosen to do the conversion on, we've chosen to use our nine liter diesel engine. We've converted that over to ethanol. And I think most customers are well aware that every 8000 series tractor has a nine liter diesel engine in it. That engine really is known for its reliability, durability, performance and uptime. And that is one of the reasons that we tried to start with that engine. It's kind of one of the main staples.
Certainly, in large ag, our (8000 series) tractors are certainly very popular, but we also use that engine in a lot of additional applications: goes into sprayers, combines and a number of different applications within the ag sector. But it is also used for construction and external engine sales. So, in terms of some of the differences or kind of the key points that you'll see, we've certainly got (different) spark plugs and plug wires. No surprise there. We’ve got different air systems, fuel systems, controls and then after treatment systems certainly will be different.
What I would note there, I mentioned earlier, with the elimination of deaf and the elimination of reagents, that effectively that would simplify our after-treatment systems dramatically. And I think, again, we've heard a lot of discussion on, you know, trying to look for solutions or ways to help the farmer to reduce some of that complexity and some of the downtime that they have. Ethanol certainly has that potential. And so, we think that's part of the benefit that we see looking at ethanol and large ag.
And to our knowledge, what I would also note is this is kind of the first of its kind, kind of a heavy-duty engine that has been converted to ethanol, that is able to produce a high amount of power in order to achieve and meet the power, density and performance expectations that customers expect out of John Deere equipment.
Tony: And so, you've mentioned it multiple times. You said that you took the nine liter engine that is in the John Deere equipment portfolio, not just ag, but also construction and elsewhere, nine liter engine and conversion.
So, this is not brand new from the ground up. You guys are taking something that's already built and proven, and you are building out this idea to convert it to a different fuel source.
Buddy: Absolutely. And the tractor right behind me in the picture, that is one of the first ethanol tractors we've had in the field in North America. Actually, is the first one that went to the field for customer standpoint. And certainly, they had an opportunity to run that to give us some feedback on it.
But what I would also note is right now we have looked at what it would take to do a conversion for existing equipment, but it is a lot of complexity to do a conversion. It's not a minor, just kind of a simply pull the engine out, put a new one in and you're ready to go. There's a lot of stuff that kind of ties behind the controls: air system, fuel system and so on. So, we will continue to monitor that.
Right now, we're looking at it more heavily for new equipment, but we will continue monitoring to see if there's other ways to use ethanol again with other equipment currently in ag.
Tony: So we're not we're not looking at the John Deere precision performance upgrade kit (PUK) quite yet. But, you know, maybe down the road, if we can get this into the new equipment and figure out what it would take. So it's really neat that you guys are able to take that nine-liter base diesel engine and make the changes that you're trying to do rather than creating a whole brand new engine.
Like you said, the picture in your background there, you know; no one would be the wiser. You'd have no idea if you saw that thing running down the field. I imagine it sounds maybe a little different, but it definitely doesn't look any different.
Buddy: Yeah. In fact, what I would say with the hood closed, there's very little differences that you can see. What you'll notice on the ethanol tractor is they have a purple fuel cap instead of the traditional green fuel cap on the left-hand side of the tractor. Beyond that, the left-hand side looks identical, and it's very subtle changes on the right-hand side.
Most of what's done is up underneath the hood on these tractors. And so really you won't notice it from a sound perspective. What customers have noted when they've been around the tractor is that it's quieter initially at an idle. You'll hear a little bit more of the kind of the hydraulic pumps and, and drivetrain in the tractor. But in terms of the engine, it is definitely, I'd say noticeably quieter when it's up and running.
What I would note, it’s not substantially quieter. It's probably about the same noise level, I would say, as the diesel engine. But the other thing they noticed with it is it is smoother than the diesel. And the reason for that is we don't have the hammer and the knock that diesels have because the injection pressures are much higher with the diesel engine that creates the hammer knock. When you get to the ethanol, injection pressures are lower. So it just sounds a lot smoother. So customers, they they like enjoying and appreciate that about the engine. That's one of the first things they notice when they get in and experience the machine.
Tony: Yeah, definitely get away from that, I guess clunky diesel sound that everyone is used to with any sort of diesel engine. So very, very interesting takeaway and feedback on that.
So you've had these tractors or a couple of them in the field for a while doing some testing. What type of work--I see the picture in your background on a grain cart, what are we doing? How have you guys been testing these tractors in the field? And how long has the testing been going on?
Buddy: So we've we've had engines in dynos (diagnostic stage) for a number of years now. That really started in 2022 and continued into 2023. By late 2023, we had our first tractor built, and we had that at one of the test sites and ran that for a while. We had a specified number of hours we targeted to put on, which we achieved, and from then we started building some test units for North America.
We've got two tractors currently that are that were out in the field running this spring, and the target is to have two additional tractors later this year. The current tractors that we have out, they were running both in Iowa and Illinois, just to get some early customer feedback, get some exposure. And, and what we're trying to understand, if this is a solution that customers want. We want to continue trying to advance this to production, but we need to make sure that it meets our customer's expectations in terms of durability, reliability, uptime and performance.
So, we recognize that customers have high expectations out of John Deere, John Deere vehicles and products. We want to make sure that we hit the hammer on the head, so to speak, to make sure our customers are satisfied with the solutions.
I would say in short; experience has been pretty good with most customers. They they have had very positive feedback. And I would say it's they're typically very surprised at the performance with the engine. They just don't expect that ethanol is going to be able to pull the way that it does. But overall, it does a fantastic job.
Tony: Yeah. And that was going to be kind of my next question there with the customer feedback and the use cases. You guys have been using these or testing these tractors, what are some of the limitations that you guys have maybe ran into that, that are maybe a limitation today? Not necessarily if this does come to fruition, but what are some of the things you guys are seeing that might be a limiting factor to these ethanol engines?
Buddy: Sure. So one of the things I would note, first, is that ethanol has less energy density in a gallon of ethanol versus a gallon of diesel. So, one of the limiting factors is that, effectively for every gallon of diesel, I need to transport 1.7-2 gallons of ethanol. So we've got to work with the industry to make sure that we can supply the tractor, keep it running.
We want to have the same or comparable amount of run time. So that would require us to add tank capacity. It would also require customers to move more fuel from the farm to the field, and more fuel from the distributor to the farm. So we've got to work to get that set up.
And what I would also note is we've got some work to do in the ethanol industry, has been incredibly supportive of this project. In fact, I would say this year with working with FS, we never waited for fuel once at the different customers that we ran these tractors at. But we've got a few things we had to jump through a few hoops to be able to get fuel. Nothing major. You know what I would say; you know that ethanol is a liquid fuel. It's easy to handle. It's easy to move. We just got to prepare for it a bit. And what I would say is if you're looking to get some, don't expect you're going to have it tomorrow, but within a week or week and a half we can certainly have the fuel. We had absolutely zero downtime as a result of getting fuel this year so far.
Tony: And those are obvious things that we're learning along the way of what it's going to take, the logistics of the fuel and all of that.
Are there any other limitations or kind of “aha” moments that you guys have had in these first couple of years of testing?
Buddy: I don't think anything that's significant or that was unexpected. You know, tractor horsepower wise, we are in the mid 300’shorsepower. You know, we've got customers certainly with higher horsepower applications. So we are looking to see how far we can stretch that. And that is something that's we'll say in process trying to figure out what the top end would be. Certainly we build larger displacement engines as well too. So we've got our JD-14, which is a 13.6 liter. So we could expand, you know, if we needed higher horsepower, one way to cover that is expand to a higher engine displacement. So there's opportunity there.
But in general, I don't think there's been anything that's been overly significant. Cold starts one that can be a little bit impactful. But I feel pretty good about cold start. I'd say the company feels pretty good. We can get this engine to start in fairly cold temperatures. I think if you asked us that question a couple of years ago, we felt a little different about that. We had some learning that we needed to do, but we have learned.
So, we're going to continue learning on these test machines here throughout this season. And we're hoping and planning on having them in the field hopefully next season as well.
Tony: Yeah. That, like you said, you're learning as this project goes along. You collect more and more customer feedback. There's obviously going to be some changes. And you talk about the horsepower that being in the mid 300’s.
Now again, this is early on, you and I got the opportunity to speak down in Texas at Commodity Classic. And it's one of those things that, you know, this is going to be a solution. But this is early testing. I mean, normally you guys at John Deere probably don't even talk about this stage of testing that we're so early on. So you talk about, you know, increasing horsepower, moving it to a smaller engine, whatever it may be. There's still a lot to come on this project.
Buddy: Absolutely. Early 2025, this was not a project that was exposed outside the company. So we were unable to discuss it. And we've certainly made a lot of progress.
What I would note is that this is an early prototype tractor. Typically, on a tractor like this, we would talk about this a year or so before production. This is probably not a product that we would bring to production here this decade. It'd be maybe an earlier next decade type of type of approach. But, the reason we're exposing this tractor is it is a substantial investment and we're trying to figure out if it's a solution that our customers want us to continue to pursue. And if so, we'd like to bring it to production, but we want to make sure that it's a solution our customers want.
Tony: Yeah. And that that leads me to kind of my final question here, Buddy.
What's next on this roadmap for this prototype ethanol power system? Where is John Deere going next? What does, you know, 2026, 2027 and so on and so forth look like to potentially bring this solution to market?
Buddy: Yeah, that's a great question. And to be upfront with you, we're working on those plans as we speak. You know, there's a lot of details that go into trying to figure out how to continue to try to advance this market opportunity. But, we will have the tractor at the Farm Progress show this year and in Boone. So we plan to be there. We're going to hope to have a fuel trailer there as well on display to show how we're transporting the fuel from the farm to the field. We're also looking at additional shows and events that we could potentially take the tractors to, but those decisions are in the process of being made.
Last week, as an example, we had one of the ethanol tractors at a plant, an ethanol plant in Shelbyville, Indiana. And effectively they were celebrating an expansion that they had. They were going to produce more ethanol through some infrastructure upgrades in the next coming year or two. And plan is they were having a celebration for that. So we thought we wanted to try to support that as well.
So, I think you're going to see us try to get this tractor out there. We will continue doing field demonstrations, so we've got plans. Those are in process, I would say, for this fall, and we'll certainly be looking at next year. We want to continue to gain customer insight and kind of their thought process on trying to advance this.
I would also note, you know, for customers that want to learn more about this, I think there is opportunity for them to talk to their local dealer. There are dealers, a lot of them have inquired about ethanol. In fact, we've done a number of presentations with them. So there are quite a few of them that are getting up to speed with what we're looking to do here, potentially. I think they're a great resource for that. And then the Corn Growers Association and Growth Energy, along with FS and Growmark, have made a substantial investment in fuel trailers here this year. We bought several. And what I would note is that they want this to continue to progress. So if folks have interest, another way to have some discussions and learn a little bit more about this would be to go through and have some discussions with the Corn Growers. And I've been working with just about every state with the Corn Growers Association, certainly all of them within the corn belt. Most of them know me by first name at this point, and we want to continue trying to work with work with those folks to advance. So, we're trying to get the tractor here hopefully. We've had it in Iowa and Illinois. We'd like to move into some of the additional corn belt states and maybe some of those that are even outside of the corn belt, but continue to learn and explore and try to get fuel procured in different parts of the states.
Tony: Yeah, really good point. You bring up talking about Corn Grower Associations, whether it's your local state or the National (Corn) Growers Association. The different ethanol agencies out there, all of that type of stuff, a lot of good key contacts to talk to and discuss about this.
If someone wants to learn more specifically about this tractor or what John Deere is doing, where can they go? Who can they talk to?
Buddy: Yeah, I would say again, I think John Deere Dealers, Corn Growers Association, I'm certainly out on LinkedIn. So that's probably no surprise. Folks can reach out to me there. I think they know how to get in touch with me, but I'm certainly happy to help. I have helped with a number of different shows and events.
Also, my role is to get the tractor out to the show in the event so folks come to Farm Progress this year. You'll likely touch base with me at that at that show, as well as additional shows we're currently looking at as well.
Tony: Well, I just want to thank you, Buddy, for taking the time out of your day to sit down and chat with me about this potential opportunity for bringing ethanol powered engines into agriculture equipment and maybe beyond. Like we said before we were recording, there's the construction industry and the other industries out there that could potentially utilize this.
So, hey, we're already growing the corn and we may as well turn it into ethanol and use it to fuel the rest of our farms. So, thanks again for doing this. Really appreciate it.
Buddy: Thank you very much, Tony, for allowing John Deere to come in and have the opportunity to talk about our special project with ethanol in ag.
Tony Kramer
Tony Kramer is the Product Manager of Planting Technology and a Certified Crop Advisor at RDO Equipment Co. He is also the host of the Agriculture Technology podcast. If you have any questions for Tony or would like to be a guest on the podcast, email agtechpodcast@rdoequipment.com, or connect with him on LinkedIn.
