Monarch Tractor is targeting small farmers of fruits and vegetables with an autonomous and electric tractor that delivers 70 horsepower and 4-wheel-drive. The MK-V tractor allows operators can switch from operating a single tractor to overseeing a fleet of autonomous tractors, according to the company.
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In an interview with Nilay Patel, editor of The Verge, Monarch’s CEO Praveen Penmetsa explains the technology and the vision for the company. See interview below.
Penmetsa says the reason he started the company was to compete against subscription-based technology that other ag manufacturers offer. In response to a question about manufacturers using data to in a proprietary way, Penmetsa says:
“No, we are completely different from that world. That was the whole reason why I started Monarch Tractor was to change that. Right now, farmers can’t even repair their data or do diagnostics on their tractors without approval from the OEM. What we are doing at Monarch is we are licensing our technology out to all the tractor companies. One of our big partners, Case New Holland, is the world’s second-largest tractor company after John Deere. We have given our technology to them, so they sit on our data stack.
“So we are basically becoming the Android of agriculture, and the whole ecosystem can access our data lake through our APIs and provide reports.”
