A tractor does actual work like pulling an implement like a plow or spinning the PTO to power a machine like a wood splitter or well drill.

Airplane engines are rebuilt every 5,000ish miles because they’re constantly running at like 50% load, it’s much harder on the engine than moving a car, a tractor is very similar.

Car engines do very little work once you’re up to speed, it only takes a fraction of the max power available to keep the car moving. This is why EVs are possible.

Running a tractor engine under load requires a lot of energy, battery density isn’t quite there yet, diesel has around 50x more energy by weight than a battery.

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ericpauley 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Off by an order of magnitude. Average TBO (which airplane engines routinely exceed if they don’t rust out) is 2,000 hours assuming piston, or about 300,000 miles for a Piper Arrow at cruise speed.

	▲	jaza an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Thanks for clarifying, I thought that sounded wrong - otherwise aeroplane engines would have to be "rebuilt", each and every time, after more than half of all international flights in and out of Australia (5000 miles, aka 8000km, is just down the road to grab a sausage roll for us!).
	▲	quickthrowman 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		My apologies, I forgot that airplane engines are tracked by running time and not miles!