Modeling and economic assessment of electric transformation of agricultural tractors fueled with diesel

•Cost model is built for electric transformation of tractors fueled with diesel.•Economic assessment is carried out for the electric transformation.•Life cycle cost of electric tractor is significant less than that of original tractor.•Price of electricity and unit cost of battery pack have a great impact.•It is economical to transform tractors with diesel into electric tractors. A cost model is built for transformation of tractors with diesel into electric tractors. Then economic assessment of the transformation is carried out by the life cycle cost, sensitivity coefficient and payback period of incremental investment (IPBP). Results show that the cost of electric tractor transformation increases significantly with the increase of power, but the transformation is limited by the weight and volume of the chosen battery pack, as well as the driving time. The life cycle cost of the transformed electric tractor is about 60% of that of the tractor with diesel, although the cost of electric tractor transformation is 2–5 times higher. The price of electricity and the unit cost of battery pack have a great impact on the life cycle cost. And the maximum IPBP is 2.053 years, but it leads to the exponential increase of the IPBP with the increase of the price of electricity, while the linear decrease of IPBP with the decrease of the price of battery pack. It is more economical to transform tractors with diesel into electric tractors when the price of agricultural electricity remains unchanged but the price of battery pack falls due to the development of battery technology.