Why does farming equipment require such low horsepower compared to your average car?
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First thing is the premise of the question. cars don’t require that much horsepower. We like and want that much horsepower.
But horsepower is only one part of the equation when it comes to any vehicle, or piece of equipment. The engine usually drives a transmission of some kind, or a pump for hydraulics, etc.
My daily driver has an excess of 300 horsepower. I have a military truck that weighs 8,500 pounds, that has a whopping 92 horsepower. I also have a tractor with a front end loader, that’s 38 horsepower, And it’ll drag both of them around the yard. It’s all about application.
First thing is the premise of the question. cars don’t require that much horsepower. We like and want that much horsepower.
But horsepower is only one part of the equation when it comes to any vehicle, or piece of equipment. The engine usually drives a transmission of some kind, or a pump for hydraulics, etc.
My daily driver has an excess of 300 horsepower. I have a military truck that weighs 8,500 pounds, that has a whopping 92 horsepower. I also have a tractor with a front end loader, that’s 38 horsepower, And it’ll drag both of them around the yard. It’s all about application.
This question seems to miss the understanding that horsepower is a measure of work done- that is, some amount of mass multiplied by some amount of distance all divided by some amount of time. (Horsepower a a unit is kinda weird like most US customary units, so you would have to pay around with the numbers a bunch to get mass, distance, and time out of the force, rotational speed, and constant that make up this particular unit)
In an application where your work gets done at a slow speed and doesn’t need to change that speed significantly or quickly like towing or farming, a better unit of measurement to use would be in units of force. How much force can this machine apply to this load. For things that rotate, the force is torque.
Horsepower is calculated from torque and rpm. The equation is (torque × rpm)/5252. If all the torque needed is generated at a very low rpm, as is the case with large diesel engines, the horsepower is going to come out small.
This question seems to miss the understanding that horsepower is a measure of work done- that is, some amount of mass multiplied by some amount of distance all divided by some amount of time. (Horsepower a a unit is kinda weird like most US customary units, so you would have to pay around with the numbers a bunch to get mass, distance, and time out of the force, rotational speed, and constant that make up this particular unit)
In an application where your work gets done at a slow speed and doesn’t need to change that speed significantly or quickly like towing or farming, a better unit of measurement to use would be in units of force. How much force can this machine apply to this load. For things that rotate, the force is torque.
Horsepower is calculated from torque and rpm. The equation is (torque × rpm)/5252. If all the torque needed is generated at a very low rpm, as is the case with large diesel engines, the horsepower is going to come out small.
Modern cars are ridiculously overpowered. Every year, the new models need to be better than the old models and better than the competition.
Farm equipment just needs to get the job done. A tractor rarely needs to work at more than 5 mph. So no reason to spend money on a larger engine.
Most commercial equipment has a lot less hp than you’d expect. When whoever is buying equipment is looking at operating costs, purchase price, expected profit, they buy just what they need, not what is most fun.
Most consumers on the other hand think, I may tow a trailer in the mountains one day, so I’d better get the bigger engine just in case. Commercial operators say put it in 2nd gear and go slow.
Modern cars are ridiculously overpowered. Every year, the new models need to be better than the old models and better than the competition.
Farm equipment just needs to get the job done. A tractor rarely needs to work at more than 5 mph. So no reason to spend money on a larger engine.
Most commercial equipment has a lot less hp than you’d expect. When whoever is buying equipment is looking at operating costs, purchase price, expected profit, they buy just what they need, not what is most fun.
Most consumers on the other hand think, I may tow a trailer in the mountains one day, so I’d better get the bigger engine just in case. Commercial operators say put it in 2nd gear and go slow.
Torque is the actual power of the engine. Horsepower is the rate at which it is produced. Farm equipment is slow, so with a relatively “weak”, low Horsepower, high torque engine, you can get a lot of work done. Heavy flywheel, low revs, almost always diesel, which are big heavy engines with a lot of torque. The right gearbox and the job’s done. Nobody’s winning any races in a tractor but it can certainly pull a load.
Torque is the actual power of the engine. Horsepower is the rate at which it is produced. Farm equipment is slow, so with a relatively “weak”, low Horsepower, high torque engine, you can get a lot of work done. Heavy flywheel, low revs, almost always diesel, which are big heavy engines with a lot of torque. The right gearbox and the job’s done. Nobody’s winning any races in a tractor but it can certainly pull a load.
They go at pretty slow speeds so the engines are built around high torque and long term reliability
At low speeds, power scales linearly with speed so pulling a plow that takes 1 ton of force at 10 mph requires half as much power as pulling the same plow at 20 mph. If you’re only ever going to pull that plow at 10 mph you don’t need a huge amount of power, lots of farming equipment doesn’t work if you pull it too fast.
Cars and trucks need to get up to highway speeds over a relatively short distance, this is really why we put 100+ horse power in everything these days. You only need about 30 hp to cruise on the highway but doing 30-70 on a short onramp to get up to a safe speed requires quite a lot more power.
They go at pretty slow speeds so the engines are built around high torque and long term reliability
At low speeds, power scales linearly with speed so pulling a plow that takes 1 ton of force at 10 mph requires half as much power as pulling the same plow at 20 mph. If you’re only ever going to pull that plow at 10 mph you don’t need a huge amount of power, lots of farming equipment doesn’t work if you pull it too fast.
Cars and trucks need to get up to highway speeds over a relatively short distance, this is really why we put 100+ horse power in everything these days. You only need about 30 hp to cruise on the highway but doing 30-70 on a short onramp to get up to a safe speed requires quite a lot more power.
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