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Tesla’s market cap is around $500 billion, but that’s after a haircut of about 50% since it hit $1 trillion in 2021. The Monarch Tractor is another of his major electric vehicles recently born in California, an all-electric tractor with an optional driver. — He is valued at $271 million by private market investors.
But the company’s CEO, Praveen Penmetsa, said there are several reasons to believe it’s the next big thing in agtech, and that the company’s home base is one where agriculture and technology will eventually become agriculture’s biggest challenge. It is the perfect place to connect to a business model that solves some of the problems.
“We are transforming Livermore into the agtech hub of the world,” Penmetsa told CNBC’s Julia Boorsstin on Tuesday after being named on the CNBC Disruptor 50 list for 2023 and ranked #49. Speaking from a local vineyard near our corporate headquarters in California.
The startup recently signed a deal constellation brandsthe liquor giant became the first company to field an MK-V tractor that came off the production line in December.
Farmers struggle with high labor costs and the carbon footprint of diesel engines, and businesses face new sustainability costs. These are the problems Monarch Tractor can solve together.
“It’s more efficient on the labor side, but it has lower emissions and can power all the other equipment on the farm,” said Penmetsa.
When the company’s co-founders, including a former Tesla Gigafactory chief, launched the company in 2018, the goal was to build a tractor that could eventually be used by every farmer in the world. Penmetsa said. Its Chief Agricultural Officer, Carlo Mondavi, is his fourth generation member of the famous vineyard family.
The company and its tractors have yet to hit the cost curve. EV tractors are still expensive, around $90,000 for Monarch’s first line, but California incentives and the cost of diesel cut the buyer’s payback period to just two years in the state. he said.
While winning the brand wars with end-product consumers, Penmetsa also benefits companies like Constellation Brands, which are facing increasing requirements to report on ESG targets and generate cost savings from more efficient operations. said to bring
It wouldn’t have been so easy if the company didn’t have Silicon Valley roots. Cameras and AI technology (powered by the NVIDIA computing platform) on the tractor can pinpoint what is happening on the tractor and identify what is happening on the land around it, allowing Monarch to turn the tractor into an “emergency” can be trained “quickly,” Penmetsa said. For new farms and new crops.
“Farms and farmlands are nearby, but it is also very close to Silicon Valley, where AI technology is being developed. Autonomy was developed here.” “Electrical devices and automobiles were developed here. So it becomes a logical place to develop and deploy these technologies.”
Watch the full video above, starring CNBC’s Julia Boorstin, to learn more about the opportunities in the nascent EV tractor industry.