Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

Up until a year ago I was regularly using a Massy Fergusson 135 [0] (Perkins Diesel version), made sometime in the 1970s. It was wonderful! So amazing to drive and use. Clunky and heavy, but you really really felt like you were using a machine. In low gears, if you put you foot down on the accelerator the engine would roar, and your speed would barely change!

And there was no fancy technology in it at all. If I was in the forest and had forgotten the key, I'd just reach behind the dashboard and hot-wire it. The air filter was basically a shisha-pipe that bubbled the incoming air through wire wool and engine oil.

Its fuel gauge didn't work either. You just had to take a look in the tank, or quickly react as soon as the revs started dropping. I ran it dry a few times and had to sit there with a spanner in one hand and YouTube into the other, while trying to bleed all the fuel lines. But they were all on the outside of the vehicle, which made it comparatively easy I imagine.

I've never actually driven a modern tractor, so don't know how it compares. I imagine the clutch is easier on the knees these days!

Anyway, this just felt like the place to share this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massey_Ferguson_135

I wish someone would do this for the pickup truck market. Lol, like make a truck for people that actually want to use it just for hauling things. Kind of like trucks used to be in the 1960's and 1970's. Not the modern ones that are more like a luxury SUV that happens to have a tiny truck bed in the back.

I think this is a reaction to the incredibly locked down ecosystem that most of these mfgs are pushing.

However, the tech exists for a reason and is not inherently bad, the issue is the lock-in, the lack of choice and interoperability.

IMO, there is plenty of space for an OEM who can play nice with others, offer an open (and vibrant ecosystem), and keep users coming back by choice, not by lock-in.

I want this for cars but to keep the modern powertrain. So an EV without the tracking/touch screens, etc etc. Or an internal combustion engine car that is just simple and efficient (and again, no tracking). I'll take the low-tech but nice features like heated seats and power windows still thank you.

Two things:

1. LOVE this idea as I've always been a big fan of "right to repair" and even at work, FinTech SRE/DevOps, I say things like "we want this to be like a 1975 Ford: you open the hood, look inside, understand it and it's easy to fix. We don't want a 2026 Ferrari."

2. The Econ major/MBA in me wonders how long you can sell cheaper tractors that last forever. I say this b/c it's like trying to sell 100 year lightbulbs: markets are not infinite so if you have everyone buy them in years 1-10, what do you sell after that? The general idea is that you charge MORE for these things since a. "easy to repair" is now an added feature, b. people will buy less of your thing so you need to make more money upfront.

Granted, there is probably some sweet spot and/or "even selling 1,000 == a couple million and that's enough for anyone" but I still like to debate the points

Late to the party here, so I don't expect this to get a lot of traction, but I'd like to point out that part of the reason this hasn't existed until recently as an option in the US is because it's functionally illegal for it to exist.

> The 12-valve Cummins is arguably the most widely understood diesel engine in North America. Every independent shop, every shade-tree mechanic with a set of wrenches, every farmer who grew up turning bolts has encountered one.

That's great! I'd point out the 12 valve wasn't introduced until the 90s, but that's kind of immaterial -- it's as simple to work on as any other mechanically injected analog diesel is and they were in widespread use for nearly a century before that. One immediately wonders why we moved away from these and towards more complex options, and why this startup has to remanufacture old engines instead of sourcing new engines. The answer among those of us who care about right to repair tends to be "evil corporations want to make proprietary systems that require ongoing fees!" which is true for John Deere, but also, the EPA mandated DEF/DPF systems + limp modes on all farm equipment since 2014, and the new relaxed standards include complicated rules about what percentage into limp mode they go at different intervals during different periods of time after those notoriously unreliable systems start to have errors. You can't do that without modern ECUs!

I'm all for reducing the harm caused by running diesel engines in the most densely populated cities on the planet (DEF and similar systems are about particulate emissions, not carbon), but we're being naive if we pretend that extending these regulations to farm equipment isn't a huge factor in why that same equipment has gotten more expensive and less reliable over the past decade.

I've been musing with friends that this is a growing and untapped market. Not merely for analog-only tractors or heavy machinery, but for stripped-down/basic machinery in general. EVs eschewing the myriad of sensors and driver assists that talk back to the cloud in favor of cruise control, local cameras, and a double-din slot for aftermarket head units; cars built for simplicity of ownership and maintenance rather than service revenue extraction; computers that get work done and turn off after, rather than constantly phoning home with cloud accounts and telemetry.

It's nice to see this company doing well for itself so quickly, and I hope they deliver on every promise made while reaping immense success. At the very least, it'd send a clear and unambiguous message that the market for simplicity is there and desperate for products that cater to it.

Better photos are found on their site: https://ursa-ag.com

Video the press are taking stills from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDR6g9iG9Ds

Interview with more details on trade show floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9QxeNyKbB4

I wonder how sustainable the business model is. Eventually, you saturate the market with your tractors, and if they work as advertised, they are owned and maintained for decades. A lot of people are out there farming with 60-80 year old tractors. I would suspect most of the OEM parts that need replacing are where most wear and tear is happening (the engine). Those parts come from Cummins, not this startup.

In the meantime, they have to maintain a very high fixed cost base in their factory, distribution network, and skilled unionized workforce. I'm really not even asking about how will they maximize shareholder dividends, I just mean how do you not go bankrupt after you sell your first 10,000 tractors.

Wouldn’t a “no-tech tractor “ be a mule? They are selling tractors based on internal combustion technology.

> The farm equipment industry spent 20 years adding complexity and cost. Ursa Ag is wagering that a significant number of farmers never wanted any of it.

Nice tag line but not a complete picture. The "significant number of farmers" in terms of actual market spend driving the equipment industry is not mom-and-pop outfits but rather agri-industrial complexes with machines to match. What they want is (1) availability and (2) ROI. For (1), that is first and foremost subject to legal stipulations like EPA etc, then secondly subject to production availability. For (2), electronics are the name of the game if you are looking to turn a profit with farming because counting every seed, measuring every drop of chem, and tracking every inch of plotted ground leads to better ROI.

This is the way if we can ensure manufacturing of the parts. It won’t catch on but it would be awesome to have “base” tractors that are mechanical and predictable. Then you slap on whatever software on top that helps (automation, etc). But they need to be decoupled imo.

I think it may have been here, where there was a story about a Toyota factory that only makes one car: a barebones, white SUV.

It’s brought by all the NPOs in the world.

It’s simple, rugged, easy to repair, and cheap. You see them, all the time, on TV.

I'm not totally sure I understand. I expected these to be selling for twice the price, not half price.

I thought the whole idea of so much of the tech is to be able to lock you in and make profit that way, through servicing and features and subscriptions and whatever else.

If they're giving up that entire profit stream, they have to make money somewhere else. So how are they selling these for so much less and still making a profit? What am I missing?

That's how you deal with vendor lock in.

These farmers have more balls than most Apple users.

> The 150-horsepower model starts at $129,900 CAD, about $95,000 USD. The range-topping 260-hp version runs $199,900 CAD, around $146,000.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the MTZ Belarus 82.3 can be had for the equivalent of $50k.

It's a simple machine for a simpler time, so obviously doesn't meet any emissions regulations. But at least in my region farmers went to great lengths to acquire them - even illegally. By the time the tractors are confiscated, they'll more than pay for themselves.

I’m genuinely confused. Why not buy an entry level kubota?

I guess the startup is selling low tech stuff in the 100-200hp range, but you start getting computers and stuff at that point with the conventional manufacturers?

They certainly sell sub 100 hp / $100K tractors that are reliable and low tech, so I’m struggling to see any differentiator except the engine size.

Also, half price is an odd claim. The Kubota M6 looks comparable to the $130K option from the startup, but starts at $100K.

I can’t read the article because cloudflare is blocking iOS now, apparently.

Also, for the small-medium range, a BEV or plugin / serial hybrid powertrain would be a game changer. Lots of low end weight, infinite torque at low speeds, and no hearing protection required to operate it. Also, it wouldn’t get as wicked hot in the summer for the operator, nor would it dump diesel exhaust everywhere.

A low tech version of that would be compelling (similar to slate).

Edit: they could even use standard mounts electrical for the generator and common battery packs, so if either powerplant blew up, it’d be a bolt-in replacement. The actual electric motors probably would never blow out.

I want a half-price no-tech electric car.

I bought a chinese mini excavator. It is super simple and I am sure things will break on it (I already had a qc issue with the fuel gauge) but I don't fear things breaking. With the competitors the dealer had to service everything. With the chinese one I text someone on whatsapp, diagnose remotely, and they send me a part. Honestly I like this model more. If you have a lot of money the dealer is great.

Similar opportunities exist in fridge and TV space

I think the trend we are seeing with tractors and cars is a circular one that the industry isn't ready for: we moved from pure mechanical machines to "mechanical + some electronics," and we are currently in the "some mechanical + more electronics" phase. But the next logical step for longevity is a return to "mostly mechanical" interfaces powered by open standards.

The problem isn't the presence of electronics. It's the use of electronics as a proprietary layer to gatekeep physical hardware. When a tractor becomes a "software platform," the farmer loses the ability to perform basic maintenance because of DRM and encrypted ECU handshakes.

We need to treat the electronics as a component of the tool, not the owner of the tool. If the software is the only thing preventing a mechanical machine from functioning, that's not a feature but a defect

This but for cars

This but for TVs

This but for robot vacuums

This but for security cameras

This but for baby monitors

This but for washing machines

This but for fridges

Anyone else got any requests?

"From whence this barbarous animus?" tweeted the technologist from the cauldron in which he boiled.

If the original article is of interest to you, this project might be too:

https://www.opensourceecology.org/

https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Open_Source_Ecology

That's what I always want -- all of my appliances should look like the ones we got in the 90s/2000s. Some Chinese companies should take this niche or maybe not-niche field, sell at a premium, which hopefully is still cheaper than smart ones.

Hopefully this gains traction

Part of the story why we can‘t feel the hypothetical productivity gains of the last century is that certain goods became 1. more expensive and 2. last shorter. This movement (as mentioned in the tractor example) might be the result of people realizing this: what drives GDP (expensive throw away crap) might not always drive wealth.

Is part of the appeal due to the fact that being remanufactured engines they don't need modern emissions control, aka Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF)? Farmers hate DEF.

Love a Cummins. The Bosch plunger pump is like a mini-me engine on the side of the block!

This is a great initiative. However, I feel that "no-tech" shouldn't be a target and that isn't necessarily good. Ex. Precision tech helps reduce operator fatigue and increases efficiency with respect to equipment operation time and material used.

This isn't to say that tech can't be shoved in every other panel on the tractor - but hope this drives Big companies towards considering where tech is necessary and where it's not.

Good, I wish them every success.

I hope this sets the trend for cars too.

I would happily buy a new car with a 2000s Japanese engine and no tech.

Ha - “Wilson saw the gap and drove a tractor through it.”

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Before buying new, aren't there enough tractors from the 60s, 70s, 80s that are still salvageable?

The general aviation world has Cessna 172s from the 50s still going strong; why buy new?

Love to see repairability prioritized.

The HN crowd would enjoy the Global Village Construction Kit's work on an open-source tractor

https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/

https://www.opensourceecology.org/portfolio/tractor/

https://www.opensourceecology.org/microtractor-workshop/

And their other open source machines they deemed "critical for civilization"

https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/gvcs-machine-index/

Can I invest? I have no need for a no-tech tractor but I would love to support a real challenger to John Deere’s near complete monopoly.

Shows the attractiveness of “right to repair.” People want to own their stuff and not be forever beholden to the manufacturer.

I love that the 5.9 lives on

ursa-ag.com For (a little bit) more info

Ah, this is the tractor that Jermey Clarkson needs!

Related: "Deere settles US right-to-repair lawsuit with $99 million fund, repair commitments"

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

This is great, if there is some real competition, then we can see John Deere will have to figure out how to compete. Either with lower prices or less lock in.

This feels like a great opportunity for Canada. We have tremendous need for tractors. The skillset for automotive/machinery and farming. A need for domestic industry development. Offers another non-American option. These don’t suffer as much from tech supply chain pains by not being full of electronics.

I’ve always thought if we met super advanced aliens they would be… no more advanced than needed. In each domain they would use only the most complex thing needed to accomplish a task and no more.

100 years ago I might cook in a cast iron pan and use a slide rule to compute.

Now I cook in a cast iron pan and use a 5nm scale multi core CPU to compute.

In 100 years I might cook in a cast iron pan and use a topological quantum computer to compute. In my home in a spinning city at a Lunar LaGrange point.

We are in the try everything with everything phase of early technological development.

This is the way. The number one metric for any tool is how much you care TRUST it, and the number two metric for any tool is how quickly you can fix it when it breaks, and number three is how easy it is to understand and modify for your particular purpose.

Sounds like Gliders (truck) though those are usually to avoid emissions requirements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_%28automobiles%29#Glide...

A friend is an organic farmer in Saskatchewan who has been buying specifically older mechanical only tractors; after a heart attack that will require him to sell off his farm, he’s finding lots of potential buyers.

Wait? No electric tractors yet? Swappable batteries would be perfect.

I grew up in farm. and I can tell you. this is actually a good deal! I really good deal!!!

You don't really need that much tech in a tractor. you just want to make it work, and make it last long enough.

Absolutely love this! Cummins is a well established engine. Plenty of opportunity to disrupt without having to build out a boatload of tech.

Belarus makes tractors. I bet people could have had these kinds of tractors long ago if not for the sanctions.

They should really choose better words for the headline. There is no such thing as a "No-Tech Tractor".

That is honestly probably a bit too far. Going back to pre-ecu times is literally burning money for the owner in form of lower fuel efficiency.

Drove a no-tech tractor working on a farm in Tuscany in the early/mid-90s. Best driving experience ever.

I think this just shows how much distrust is in technology improving things nowadays.

Slap a few cheap cameras, a GPS receiver, and Comma.ai and you're fully automated.

Tech will consume itself.

It is with glee that I will watch it burn.

I saw George Bush at a tractor factory. He asked what the most important tractor innovation was. No hesitation whatsoever ... air conditioning. AC and a radio, and backup cameras ... there is a place for reasonable electronics.

We need a 'Framework (as in laptop maker) for physical devices'. Basically most of this physical tech can be relatively easily recreated with current tech and 3D printing. In fact probably better done with electric motors and batteries. There is definitly a moat there to be disrupted.

Nice. This is the kind of technology we need when we'll have to fight back against AI overlords.

So better and cheaper? I am no farmer but I'd like to have one

this is a great move. Hoping the best for this company

Butlerian Jihad now.

This is pretty cool! Kinda similar to what Slate is doing with cars.

What prevents these no tech tractors to be electric?

farmers still need tech, they should try provide software (not too much). just the prefect amount and don't become evil like deere.

No-tech tractor seems to be a bit of an oxymoron.

I wonder if one can start a company selling repairable cars, for example, be it electric or gasoline.

I predict the next trend in technology will be low tech or analog whenever possible like SpeedQueen washer/dryers, etc. It's funny looking at antique appliances that actually have superior functionality and features to modern ones. There are old washing machines that have much faster rinse rotation speeds and can empty the water within seconds and almost always have replaceable parts. We need to somehow require machines and appliances be built like this and not this disposable trash we have become used to.

I feel this. I've been looking at ADV bikes and everything on the market has a cellular modem for always on cloud connectivity, and multiple vendors, including Zero (the electric internet darling) are offering paid feature unlocks via apps.

On top of this, I looked at Zero's job postings and they're desperately trying to hire a firmware lead to get the team to use Claude Code (precisely what I want managing a 100hp motor under my ass).

Not only are we in a world where everything is locked down with software, the software is about to get way worse and there's nothing you can do about it.

I wish someone would do something similar for TVs. Just a really fantastic panel with only the tech needed to decode HDMI or whatever and show it on the screen. No other tech whatsover: no telemetry, no smart anything, nothing.

Now let's do washing machines and refrigerators

You can get a kubota M5-111 with a closed cab for $70k-100k, cheaper than these. Plus zero percent financing though then for 5-7 years. Well built and a comparable class in terms of weight and horse power.

People aren’t buying them for price, but the first sentence discusses it as if it’s relevant.

My assumption are farmers are trying to skirt the eco rules for vehicles in some way. Which by the way is insanely annoying and has caused issues for all the farmers I know at one point or another. Worse, you can’t fix the ecosystems on your own so you have to get them serviced costing quite a bit and importantly putting your tractor out of commission for a while. It’s why older tractors have a premium

Next up, cars with no-tech! Bring them on.

A few years ago, during the initial stages of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, John Deere was remotely bricking any tractors that were stolen by Russia.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/01/europe/russia-farm-vehicl...

I'm sure this was meant to be a story about the bad guys being thwarted, but it only made my blood run cold. A single company can remotely destroy the agricultural sector of a country if they felt like it.

This is a welcome development.

A good ox is even cheaper

I think there is a market for cars as well.

15 years ago, Dacia used to make stripped sedans that sold for as cheap as 7.5k euros. It was a wild success. Now, they've pivoted to making modern cars, still on the cheap side, but the cheapest now is a compact car that sells for 13k.

The only reason is that those modern cars have higher margins and there is no competition for cheap cars. So why make cheap cars to kill the market of higher margins ones?

The free market, if it works at all, should produce companies like wheelfront that caters to that share of the population.

We need this for cars.

We badly need right to repair for everything from tractors to iphones.

One minor gotcha is they're currently dependent upon a limited supply of remanufactured and no longer available (NLA) parts. Some supplier(s) is going to have step up and make new ones to keep building and supporting tractors. It's not an unsolvable problem.

For anyone who likes rural shop repair videos of farm (mostly older), passenger, and commercial vehicles of all makes and ages from ancient to modern, they might appreciate Watch Wes Work.

https://www.youtube.com/c/WatchWesWork

Good. Simplicity should win out over enshittification in the end.

Do they do cars?

> Pre-war EIA forecasts projected U.S. diesel prices would average $3.47/gallon in 2026. As of late March, the national average hit $5.37/gallon, roughly 55% above where it was expected to be.

Diesel prices will continue to rise so it's not clear what these farmers are actually signing up for.

I would have thought would be 2x price

Good. There should be an option for a straightforward mechanical machine. This also has trickledown effect where hopefully regular town mechanics can fix things based on their historical knowledge of engines. Instead of not wanting to touch anything because of the all the electronics involved.

Also, I know this is a strange parallel, but it feels similar to what Dell and HP did to their servers. They made the BIO so complicated that it takes 5-10 minutes for their severs to boot up. Using an older Dell server with a straightforward BIOS that boots up in 30 seconds feels awesome.

What is it with American companies that eventually always try to sell crap and low moral products/services. As if the people are educated in luring people into traps to only benefit themselves.

This makes me think of the new toyotas, the rav4s, 4runner, and land cruiser. Through government regulations, they were forced to create smaller more fuel efficient engines. To get the same power, they overstrain them, and put huge turbos on the engines. The outcome is a strictly worse engine, that essentially uses the same fuel as older engines.

The demand for older vehicles in certain segments is actually increasing

Hell yeah 12V 5.9 Cummins. The one in my pickup has 250k hard miles on it, some blowby, and it starts right up at -10°F no problem.

Wish they sold something in the compact utility segment. 40-60hpish. I'd love an affordable Canadian made tractor for property maintenance / smaller farms.

(Though these days I've love something electric. I don't need long run time, I'm not doing row crops. Just market gardening and property maintenance stuff. All the electric stuff I see out there is aiming up at the high end and for autonomy / "smart" tractor stuff which I don't care about.)

Good. The John Deere monopoly is wild, but if you talk to a farmer they say they can’t handle the repairs. Sure, John Deere gets to make more expensive and complex machines and convince their customers that it’s “the future”.

John Deere gonna send fucking assassins after them. Or probably engage them in some endless lawsuit.

I don't think the issue is "smarts" in our cars/tractors/light-switches/etc but the lock-in and "authorized repair" bullshit.

On the topic of Smart Home stuff (which is the only topic I'm even slightly qualified to talk about) I've heard about people wanting "dumb houses" after initially people wanting "smart houses". It's my opinion that this desire is driven mainly due to bad experiences and doing smart homes the "wrong way".

What do I mean by that? Either they got burned by XYZ Smart company going under and all their cloud-dependant devices dying/bricking. they had a system like Control4 which required authorized resellers to make even basic changes [0], and/or they were overwhelmed with juggling 5 different apps/platforms that don't talk to each other. That doesn't mean smart homes are bad, just that the hardware/software was bad. I fully recognize that for the "normal" person the only options are currently "bad hardware/software" or "dumb house" but there _are_ better alternatives.

My philosophy for "Smart Home" is one of progressive enhancement (and graceful degradation). What that means is everything I "enhance" with "smarts" should still work the old way that people are accustomed to. Every light in the house can be controlled via "Alexa|Siri|Google turn off the Kitchen Light" but they can also be turned off/on by walking over to the wall and flipping a switch [1]. This means Smart Switches _not_ Smart Bulbs [2]. If my Home Assistant (yes, I'm one of those people) server goes offline, everything still works, the switches work, the door lock works with a key, the garage still opens. My "smart-ifying" of the house is not replacing the way to do something, it's only adding additional control.

In addition to that, and something that should come as no surprise, I refuse to use a cloud, or at least depend on a cloud for my smart home. For this reason I prefer Z-Wave/Zigbee devices. If the manufacturer goes out of business it doesn't matter (no pun intended [3]). While I can, and have, used cloud integrations with Home Assistant, I try to make sure that's just a stopgap to decide if I want to go all-in. I own a few Z-wave devices from companies that don't exist anymore and they have been chugging along without issue for years. I love that stability.

There is nothing in my house where you have to walk over to a wall tablet to control something or open an app on your phone, I would consider that a failure. Everything flows through Home Assistant, it's the brain, I don't want multiple apps fighting or different ecosystems that don't mesh (radio-wise or functionality-wise).

What does this have to do with tractors? Glad you asked! I see this as the same for tractors, they should absolutely be "dumb" with the ability to control/query parts of it and add the "smarts" through an external system. Whatever the equivalent of Z-wave would be for monitoring/controlling the device, not something built-in or required for functionality. A modular, non-locked-down system. I'm sure we are nowhere near that point but I write all this as a "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater", I think John Deere was wrong in how they went about adding "smarts" but I don't think the idea is without merit either. They went down the greedy, anti-right-to-repair route which is clearly wrong.

I'd love to see a combo of Ursa Ag's tractor as a base platform where smarts can be added to it without compromising it's repairability. A take on the "naked robotic core"-idea if you will.

[0] And each time you have a authorized reseller come out they try to sell you on an expensive upgrade because they make (most) their money on selling you stuff, not maintaining it. I really dislike Control4 and things like it.

[1] Point of clarification, I use Decora style paddles as is common on smart switches. The only downside (IMHO) to my system is they always "rest" in the middle orientation so they are "worse" than "dumb switches" in that you can't look at the switch and see the state it's in. That said, 3-way switches have already eroded this ability and I feel like this is an acceptable trade off. Maybe in the future people will care enough to make the switch represent the state correctly (with little servos flipping it) but I don't feel like I'm missing much. You may disagree.

[2] My exception to this rule is I will allow a Smart Bulb as long as there is also a Smart Switch. Maybe you can't change to color temperature via hardware on the wall but you can always still turn it on/off at the wall. Graceful degradation.

[3] My information might be out of date but I have very little interest in Thread/Matter, I don't want my smart devices to _ever_ talk to the cloud. Which is why I love Z-wave/Zigbee, they talk to my hub, my hub talks to whatever I want/approve. I never want my devices updating (or more likely, bricking) due to the cloud. I understand that Thread/Matter do not immediately mean "cloud" and in fact might even require local control but I'll believe it when I see it. So far Thread/Matter have been a massive nothing-burger IMHO. Maybe in a few years I'll be all-in on it but so far, I don't find it compelling at all.

Danielle Smith never met a corporate shill she could say no to

I predict 6 months before John Deer gets the Alberta UCP on the line and gets a law passed that bans "unsafe tractors" (or the like)

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Thank you Cloudflare for making it impossible to read news, and yes I am a human.

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This sounds good until you remember that we have all these electronics precisely to avoid the 1955 smog situation and climate change. Going back to 1990-era cars isn't solving anything. What we need is a patent and intellectual property reform. My personal opinion is that the same company shouldn't be allowed to sell both the hardware and the software. Open source ECU, anyone?

I wonder by what mechanism they plan to import these into the US. This seems like a emissions regulation end-run like glider trucks, but my understanding of the EPA import rules doesn't really leave any room for this type of game.

Yes, a lot of modern tractors are locked down due to predatory dealer service lock-in, but they're also complex and locked down due to emissions regulations, which are ostensibly a net societal gain. The classic HN "everything should be totally open and free" conversation really needs to happen through this lens IMO.