Electrifying compact agricultural tractors: comparative assessment of battery electric, fuel cell hybrid electric, and diesel powertrains

Decarbonizing compact tractors for vineyards and orchards is particularly challenging due to strict limits on vehicle size, low-profile architecture, and stability requirements. This work presents a preliminary comparison of two electrified powertrain solutions — a full battery-electric (BEV) architecture and a battery-electric/fuel cell hybrid (FCHEV) — against a conventional diesel baseline, for a compact ROPS tractor developed within an ongoing prototype project. The comparison is grounded in three experimentally-derived field duty cycles (shredding, treatments, soil tillage; 4 h each, 1.89–3.16 ha), capturing real-world speed, terrain grade, and PTO-load profiles to jointly reproduce traction and implement power demand. A forward quasi-static vehicle model translates these cycles into tank-to-field onboard energy requirements for each powertrain, alongside component packaging and mass distribution under the geometric constraints typical of specialty tractors. Results show the BEV configuration consistently minimizes onboard energy demand (25.4–41.7 kWh across cycles), with the fuel cell hybrid requiring roughly 1.7–1.8× more and the diesel baseline 3.2–3.9× more. Hydrogen consumption per cycle (1.31–2.24 kg) remains well within the 5 kg onboard tank capacity assessed for storage packaging. While the full BEV offers the simplest architecture, its autonomy is constrained by battery mass and volume; the BEV+FC hybrid extends operational range and improves mass balance at the cost of greater system complexity. By combining real duty-cycle data with packaging analysis, the study identifies concrete design trade-offs to support future development of electrified compact tractors.