On Wednesday the fiasco surrounding the disclosure of details on the planned Houthi attack to the editor of The Atlantic continued to dominate the U.S. news cycle. To counter uncomfortable news like that, the trend we’ve seen from the U.S. administration is to make some other announcement that draws attention away from the current scandal in hope of downplaying it.

Former presidential advisor Steve Bannon once described it as a way to “flood the (news) zone” and provide a distraction.

Turning to a new tariff announcement seemed almost certain to be the fallback plan as the Atlantic story gathered momentum — and it was.

The tariff announcement came in a rambling and at times absurd press conference by the U.S president. Donald Trump veered from announcing an additional 25 per cent tariff on foreign-made cars to declaring Germany “almost went bankrupt” from incorporating green energy. He then went on to lament dead whales washing up on shores somewhere in the world.

It was unclear after the announcement how the tariff would be applied to the integrated North American auto sector, which builds sub-assemblies for autos in all three countries before they’re added to finished vehicles.

“Fifty per cent of the parts in a (Canadian built) vehicle are American,” said Ontario Premier Doug Ford. “I find it hard to believe they can dissect every part in an automobile by April 2.”

Despite earlier promises given in a meeting a couple of weeks ago between Ontario and federal government officials with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in which the U.S. agreed there would be no surprise announcements, there was no previous warning given to Canadian officials ahead of today’s announcement, according to Ford.

“We thought we’d be informed. The words ‘no surprises’ came up in the meeting and sure enough, well, here’s the surprise. This is the tough part of negotiating with President Trump through Secretary Lutnick, you don’t know what’s coming day to day.”

“This is a direct attack, to be clear,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney. “We will defend our workers. We will defend our workers, and we will defend our country together.”

The U.S. president boasted during the press conference that new manufacturing plants are suddenly being planned and built in the U.S. at a rapid rate, which in turn would create many new construction and auto worker jobs.

“I don’t know how he thinks it’s going to be better,” said Ford. “You can’t flick on a switch and build an auto plant overnight.”

“We do not yet have the executive order, so there are different variants of the 25 per cent announcement,” Carney said. “One would be it’s only the part component of a car. Another would be it’s not the entire vehicle.

“We await the executive order for that clarity. It’s entirely unjustified and inconsistent with CUSMA,” he said, referring to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, which came into force during the previous Trump administration in 2020, replacing the former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“We buy as many cars from the U.S. as we sell down there,” added Ford. “I can’t for the life of me understand how he thinks Americans aren’t going to feel the pain. I’ll encourage the prime minister to target American cars as well. That’s what we’re going to focus on.

“Manufacturers here have been stockpiling parts. Once that supply runs out you’ll see assembly lines shut down in both countries.”

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When dealing with an unfamiliar seller on a private sale agreement, none of those things should be taken for granted.

READ MORE: More heft against theft

Fortunately, most of those can be easily verified. A thorough in-person inspection will reveal its condition. The person you deal with at your own bank can usually help you check to see if there are any financial liens registered against it.

And there is an online reference to help you determine if the machine has been reported stolen to the police.

CPIC (the Canadian Police Information Centre) offers limited public access to its computerized database, which records serial and identifying numbers for property the police have listed as stolen.

Standing beside a vehicle or machine you can access the website from your mobile device and punch in the serial number. In a few moments, the site will confirm whether that serial number is on file as stolen.

It’s the same system the police use when they make a check. Of course, accredited police agencies get much more information from it than is offered to the general public.

However, if the machine was stolen and the actual owner didn’t record the serial number, that information won’t have been given to the police and won’t show up on a CPIC search. So, it’s not an absolute guarantee the item isn’t stolen, but it’s the best check you can make to help you verify the legitimacy of a private purchase deal.

The CPIC site isn’t just restricted to machines and vehicles. Aside from vehicles, boats, boat motors, bicycles, general property items and firearm serial numbers can also be checked.

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This year Kubota was back for a second time with a large display, showing both concept and production-ready autonomous machines.

“Last year was our first year at CES, really exposing what’s going on inside Kubota on development,” Kubota North America’s chief technology officer Brett McMickell says. “This exhibit is significantly expanded over what we did last year. We’re able to show a broader portfolio.”

The brand showed its Smart Autonomous Sprayer, Smart Imager and Smart Pruner, but the centrepiece of its display this year is the KATR, an all-terrain, fully autonomous vehicle platform capable of carrying out a variety of tasks.

“The KATR is really a versatile machine,” McMickell says. “It’s solving several different problems in agriculture and construction. It’s really designed for a variety of off-road applications. We won a Best of Innovation Award. It’s a recognition of all the work that’s gone into it, as well as I think the potential for this product.

“At its core is an independent suspension on four wheels and it has two wheels in the centre to make sure it doesn’t get high-centred. The purpose of the independent suspension is it allows the platform to remain stable, even in off-road environments.”

The KATR will see its first commercial release early this year in Japan. Kubota has prototypes at work here in North America, to see how growers and those in other industries could best benefit from what it offers — so there is no firm release date yet for our market.

“We developed the KATR as kind of a versatile foundation for a lot of other solutions,” he adds. “And at CES we’ll be showing some of these other solutions in different settings. It allows you to build in different sensors for crop scouting and sensors for different applications like pruning and for straight up material transport. We’ve been exploring this for a while now.”

Last year Kubota showed its compact Agri Concept fully autonomous ag tractor at CES. After getting feedback, the brand redesigned it as the Agri Concept 2.0. The major difference this time is that it includes a standard operator’s station.

Inability to use the first version as a regular tractor was a common critique by potential customers — something most other brands have also heard when introducing driverless concept models in the past.

“Our customers said ‘You know what, I really enjoy driving Kubota vehicles, but you guys removed the cab,'” McMickell says. “‘I want the cab back. You’re taking away some of my enjoyment. Utility tractors are used for a bunch of things on the farm and I want to be able to have manual control of the vehicle.’ We’re showing the ability to go autonomous as well as drive it manually.”

A new feature of the Agri Concept 2.0 is increased communication ability. There are prominent LED displays that let people around it know what the machine is doing and whether or not they are interfering with its operation.

“The other thing you’ll see is we’re exploring voice command to have a more natural conversation with the vehicle,” McMickell says. “We found a lot of operators don’t necessarily configure the vehicle correctly for the application, so we’re putting a lot more intelligence into the vehicle. We’re showing what voice interaction could look like.”

Green ‘giant leaps’

John Deere had a lot to talk about at its display, too, with four new autonomous machine introductions.

“Today we’e going to take four giant leaps forward in John Deere’s autonomy journey,” said John Deere’s senior VP and chief technology officer, Jahmy Hindman, at a press conference. “When we talk about autonomy, we mean full autonomy. Nobody is in the machine. Using the John Deere Operations Center app on a smartphone they can interact with the machine, monitor the machine’s activity and see performance data.”

The brand pulled the wraps off a fully autonomous, battery-electric, zero-turn mower. It also revealed autonomy kits for 9RX and 5ML tractors as well as its 460 articulated, off-road dump trucks.

A key piece of technology for Deere’s new autonomous vehicles is a second-generation perception system which provides a much larger field of vision, allowing machines to work faster and pull wider implements.

“The impact of our second-generation technology is immense,” says director of high-value crop autonomy Igino Cafiero. “What it allows us to do is scale autonomy. In addition to the seven cameras around the tractor, we’ve also introduced Lidar sensors as well. Lidar provides depth information.”

That technology builds on what is currently used by the autonomous 8R tractor system for tillage the brand recently released.

“We started (autonomy) with the slowest, easiest job on the farm, which is fall tillage with a chisel plow,” says Willy Pell, CEO of Deere’s Blue River Technology subsidiary. “Now we’re excited to spread our wings beyond our initial use case.”

The second-generation perception kit will also be available as a retrofit kit for select Deere machines.

A new battery-electric concept tractor debuted as well, similar in size to Deere’s 5M models.

“This fully electric tractor is powered by up to five immersion-cooled batteries,” Cafiero says. “So farmers can meet their operational needs and sustainability goals as well. Fuel costs, maintenance costs and downtime are all reduced by about half. Today, we’re testing this electric tractor with real customers in real orchards.”

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My own personal attachment to AM radio only extends to where any better option begins. It can be difficult to listen to AM radio without feeling as though you’re being yelled at. That can’t be helped, I know. At its frequency, voices and music have to overcome a lot of interference to make it through the air to your ear, and anyone who’s good at it adjusts their tones accordingly. That’s why the late Ronnie Spector belting out the line “Be my little baby” in 1963 hits much differently, by necessity, than when she sang the same line in someone else’s song in 1986.

It wasn’t just a problem for the Ronettes, of course. During my own brief spell reading AM radio news, I’d take my voice almost to the point of caricature, and in your AM speaker I suppose I sounded (more or less) normal — but even so, forcing out that much air just to speak can make even the least urgent news sound like a late-breaking bulletin.

So, no: not everyone on AM radio is necessarily yelling at you. At the same time, though, it shouldn’t be surprising that people predisposed to yelling can find popularity nowadays on the AM dial. If that isn’t what Marshall McLuhan meant when he said “The medium is the message,” it should be.

We say all this here today in a farm paper because of the recent flap over AM radio’s continued existence in vehicles, if not everywhere. Readers of our web site may recall last year when automakers Mazda, Volkswagen and Tesla had pulled AM radio from their electric vehicle lines and Ford said it would follow suit in vehicles made from 2024 onward. (Ford threw that plan in reverse very shortly afterward.)

The motive for ditching AM capability in new vehicles is mainly technical, as electric vehicles’ drivetrains can interfere with the AM signal. It’s possible to shield the AM receiver, but doing so is a lot of work just to maintain customers’ access to a service fewer and fewer of them actually use — so it just makes sense not to bother, right?

Wrong, say AM radio’s defenders in rural and farm groups, broadcasting and politics. Sure enough, just a few weeks ago, the U.S. House of Representatives’ energy and commerce committee voted to send a bill mandating AM receivers in new vehicles back to the full House for a vote.

The bill’s supporters say that’s an important step toward getting that bill into law — and let’s face it, that makes it the law up here in Canada as well. The U.S. legislation sets up a Department of Transportation rule requiring that technology to receive AM signals be installed as standard equipment in new vehicles, both domestic and imported — on pain of fines for non-compliance.

Now, you don’t have to search very far online to find people yelling that the U.S. AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act is backward — that it chains all of us up to near-obsolete technology, and compels consumers to eat the expense of keeping it. In a lot of other cases, I’d probably line up with those who say it’s time to let old things die — but not this time.

Both here and in the U.S., over-the-air broadcasting is regulated as a public service, carried out on frequencies deemed public property. Of course there’s no guarantee that any essential broadcasts, such as emergency alerts, will necessarily be heard by Canadians who don’t keep AM or FM radios, televisions or smartphones within reach and turned on at all times — but all of the public, I think, still deserves a fighting chance to hear them. And many farmers will tell you that without FM or local TV or reliable cell signals within reach, AM is the best, or only, option around.

Here in the world’s second-biggest country by area, with the low population density that entails, all Canadians — even more so than our southern neighbours — need the option of a wide-spanning longer-range broadcast source, as lo-fi as it may be.

On top of that — as many farmers will also tell you — when a very small segment of the population is in dire need of a major technological advancement in a hurry, a viable alternative won’t emerge as quickly as it would for the mass market.

Any moves that deliberately make the status quo less viable in the meantime, though, will just produce a lot of needless yelling.

As always, feel free to drop me a line with your thoughts on the matter.

The post Editor’s Rant: The message of the medium appeared first on Grainews.

Edmonton-based Go Auto, which now owns 65 auto dealerships in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, the Northwest Territories and Washington state, has added even more to its chain. In April it announced it acquired Merlin Ford Lincoln and the Canada West RV and Truck Centre in Saskatoon.

Go Auto retails 28 different new vehicle brands and says it employs about 4,200 people.

The post Auto dealership chain expands appeared first on Grainews.

They are now stocking more parts and components on site because a lack of products caused major disruptions during the pandemic.

“I know it can be a challenge for producers, dealers and manufacturers to determine the right amount of parts inventory to carry on farm and in their respective businesses,” said Bob Cochran, general manager of Highline Manufacturing, which makes bale processors, feed mixers and other equipment at Vonda, Sask.

“I know of many manufacturers who significantly increased their inventory levels in response to the supply chain challenges post-pandemic, in part to ensure customer satisfaction.”

Cochran, who is also chair of Agricultural Manufacturers of Canada, said it’s a difficult balance to get right. Companies need parts to manufacture equipment, but they can’t keep everything in stock.

“The cost of carrying inventory has certainly increased for all involved,” he said by email.

“When we don’t have it on the shelf we expose ourselves to some level of risk of downtime and reliance on the supply chain to get it to us.”

The pandemic was a difficult time for equipment manufacturers and ag retailers as shutdowns and lockdowns interfered with the supply chain. Steel production, parts manufacturing, trucking and many other pieces of the system were disrupted.

The consequence was shortages and longer wait times for ag retailers and farmers for tractors, balers, seed drills and other equipment.

Not every manufacturer has returned to normal, but supply chains have improved, Cochran said.

“Lead times are reducing and shortages are fewer on many components, although not on all of them.”

Overall, ag equipment manufacturers in Canada are recovering, but different companies are in difference stages of recovery, he said.

“In all cases it takes time for the market to stabilize, and that is happening.”

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The first EV Sierra model to land at dealerships will be the Sierra EV Denali Edition 1. GM claims it will have an estimated 640-kilometre range due to its dedicated Ultium EV platform design.

READ MORE: New mid-cc ATV models from Can-Am

“This is the Denali of EVs — and a truck that is every bit a GMC,” said Duncan Aldred, vice-president of Global Buick and GMC. “That means it leaves nothing on the table when it comes to hauling, towing and overall power, while unlocking even more possibilities around what a GMC pickup can offer.”

The 2024 Sierra EV Denali Edition 1 will be available for purchase after its official launch in early 2024. GM will introduce two additional trim level models, the Sierra EV AT4 and Elevation, in the 2025 model year.

“The 2024 Sierra EV Denali Edition 1 is just the beginning,” added Aldred. “It will offer customers our very latest in technology, capability and luxury delivered in a way only GMC can do — with much more to come.”

SPECIFICATIONS

The EV Sierra should be a capable truck, at least according to GM’s description of its specifications. Together, the front and rear axle electric drive units will produce an impressive 754 horsepower and 785 pound-feet of torque at the wheels. The truck gets a 9,500-pound (4,309-kilogram) tow rating. If speed is your thing, the EV Sierra has a zero-to-60 time of 4.5 seconds.

The Sierra can also be used as a mobile power station with 10.2 kilowatts of off-board power available. That’s enough, according to GM, to power a home’s basic systems for up to 21 days. It can also quickly recharge enough power to travel 160 kilometres in only 10 minutes at a public fast-charging facility, so no long delays on extended trips for topping up batteries.

The initial EV Sierra release will be a pretty high-spec’d model, with just about every option GM offers in pickups coming standard, along with a few more like the “panoramic fixed glass roof.” It has a 16.8-inch infotainment screen (the largest one ever for a GM pickup). That’s aside from the 11-inch driver information screen and multicoloured heads-up display. There are also 14 available camera views to show all sides of the vehicle.

Underneath the body is air ride adaptive suspension that can alter ride height by up to two inches.

READ MORE: ‘Next-generation’ Xerion tractors from Claas

And pushing the boundaries of technology, the Sierra gets trailering-capable Super Cruise Hands-Free Driver Assistance, which can be used on 400,000 miles of select roadways in North America. But GM doesn’t want you to be watching YouTube videos while you leave all the driving to the truck. This feature still requires full driver supervision.

“This truck is everything customers know about the Sierra, but is so much more,” said Nichole Kraatz, chief engineer of GM Battery Electric Trucks. “Leveraging GM’s dedicated Ultium pickup platform, it takes the Sierra franchise to new benchmarks of capability, versatility and luxury — all in a zero-tailpipe-emissions package.”

The Sierra has five drive modes, one of which can be customized to suit driver preferences. And if that’s not enough, like on the Hummer pickup EV, there is four-wheel steering capability that turns both front and rear wheels to let the Sierra navigate very sharp corners, crab steer to move the vehicle diagonally and one-pedal driving, which only requires use of the accelerator pedal to move and stop the truck.

All of these high-end features probably had you thinking the 2024 Sierra EV Denali Edition 1 was going to be one expensive truck. If so, you’re dead right. GM says it expects to slap a US$107,000 MSRP on the window sticker. However, if you can wait one more year for a battery electric Sierra, closer to the release date of the initial Sierra model, GM will reveal the full range of EV Sierras, which will start at an approximate base price of US$50,000.

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