Anyone who has spent a morning next to a diesel tractor knows the routine. The engine roars, the exhaust hangs in the air, and the fuel bill quietly grows in the background.
A new small tractor wants to change that picture. The GoSun Moonrider is fully electric, can top up its battery with its own solar panels, and goes on sale in North America. It runs about five hours on a charge, and on a sunny day its optional solar roof adds roughly another hour and a half of work.
A tractor made in two countries
The Moonrider is a joint project between GoSun, a solar products company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Moonrider, a young electric tractor maker from India. GoSun, founded in 2016, is best known for gear like solar cookers, portable fridges and water purification systems.
Moonrider was founded in Bengaluru in August 2023 by Anoop Srikantaswamy and Ravi Kulkarni. The startup raised 6 million dollars in a funding round led by pi Ventures in December 2025, according to YourStory, and builds tractors from 27 to 75 horsepower.
GoSun announced the North American launch on August 20, 2026, and showed the tractor at the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, from September 1 to 3.
What’s under the hood
The model sold by GoSun is the 27 horsepower version, with four-wheel drive and a gearbox with nine forward and three reverse speeds. Its battery is a 24 kWh lithium iron phosphate pack (usually shortened to LFP), a type of lithium battery also found in many electric cars and home storage systems.
Charging from a standard 220 volt outlet takes about 2.5 hours to go from 20% to 80%, according to the GoSun reservation page. The tractor weighs about 2,414 pounds, is roughly 105 inches long and has a turning radius of about 4.6 feet, so it’s built for tight spaces rather than giant fields.
It also comes with some modern extras. An app lets owners track the tractor by GPS and set geofences (virtual boundaries that trigger an alert if the machine leaves a set area).
The solar roof, explained simply
The optional solar canopy has a capacity of 1,100 watts. In plain terms, that’s a set of panels on top of the tractor that feeds the battery while you work or while it sits parked in the yard.
GoSun says it adds about 1.5 hours of runtime per sunny day. That won’t replace the plug for heavy daily jobs, but for lighter use it could stretch time between charges a lot. As Electrek pointed out, depending on how hard it’s used and on the weather, the tractor might go “days, weeks, or even months” without plugging in.
That’s the real selling point. Out on a back field, far from an outlet, the sun becomes a small but steady fuel station.
Can it do real farm work?
A tractor is only as useful as the tools it can pull or power. The Moonrider has a three-point hitch that can lift about 1,653 pounds and a rear power take-off, or PTO.
A PTO is basically a spinning shaft at the back of the tractor that drives attached equipment. Here it delivers 22.8 horsepower at the standard 540 rpm setting (with a 540E economy option), which lets it run common implements like mowers, tillers and post-hole diggers.
GoSun is aiming at properties of roughly 5 to 50 acres. Think small farms, vineyards, homesteads, campuses and large private estates rather than industrial grain operations.
The money question
At $19,995, including a 220 volt charger, the Moonrider is priced to compete with diesel tractors of a similar size. GoSun also estimates about $15,000 in savings over five years of ownership compared with a diesel model, although that figure depends heavily on fuel prices, electricity rates and how much the tractor is used.
“Farmers need to cut their fuel costs. The GoSun Moonrider solar electric tractor provides a cost effective alternative to expensive diesel tractors,” said Patrick Sherwin, GoSun’s CEO. In another statement, he added that “small-scale farming and property management have relied on noisy, costly diesel utility vehicles for far too long.”
There’s also less to fix. GoSun points out that the electric drivetrain has fewer moving parts than a combustion engine, which should mean less maintenance and less time in the shop.
Quiet, clean and still unproven
Noise is easy to overlook until it’s gone. A near-silent tractor means you can talk with someone nearby, work early without waking the neighbors and skip the diesel fumes altogether.
Still, some caution is fair. Deliveries are only expected in early 2027, and so far there are no independent field tests showing how the battery holds up after years of mud, heat and heavy loads. Moonrider’s own claims (like electricity costing about 80% less per hour than diesel, according to its website) come from the company itself.
For now, anyone curious can reserve one with a refundable $50 deposit. Whether small farmers take the plunge will likely depend on how the first units perform once they hit real dirt.
The official press release has been published by GoSun.
Photo: GoSun
