Global battlefield (2025) – The tractor OEM race is no longer purely metal-first. In 2025, the war is fought on compute, autonomy, and dealer service moats. The diesel stack delivers ROI now. Electric tractors gain narratives now — but scale later.

Core Battlelines

• Farm OS ownership (who controls the digital stack)
• Autonomy-first ROI deploying on diesel platforms
• Electric-upshift pilots restricted to specialist HP niches
• Used tractor valuation pulse controlled by dealers and contractors
• Service uptime > horsepower — new competitive moat

"Horsepower fades. Uptime wins."
— Tractor P&L thesis, 2025

Autonomy vs Electric

Autonomous features scale faster because they work on diesel hardware today — no field charging bottleneck. Electric remains important, but its landgrab is post-2030 when batteries get cheaper, lighter, and fields get charging infra.

Tech Track	2025	2030 Projection
Diesel + Autonomy	Mainstream ROI	Universal mid-HP+ adoption
Electric Tractors	1–2% pilots	5–7% pockets & momentum

Dealer Moats — The Strongest Moat Today

TractorNews tracks dealers because:

• They decide the service reach moat
• They influence credit and lending pulses
• They control used tractor price sentiment
• They enable software distribution at scale

Why This Decade Changed

• Hardware base is ageing, but revenues are stronger than ever
• Autonomy provides recurring revenue without battery risk
• Mid-HP becomes the global P&L battleground
• Dealers form powerful distribution and uptime moat
• EV remains symbol-first, scale-next

---