Moonrider

India is the world’s largest producer of milk, jute and pulses, and second largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane and cotton, making its agricultural industry a powerhouse. For decades, tractors have played a key role in Indian agriculture, but they present major challenges. Not only can diesel tractors be loud and expensive to maintain, but they contribute significantly to greenhouse gas  emissions, with diesel tractors accounting for 60% of India’s total agricultural fuel usage. 

Moonrider is an electric tractor manufacturer based in Bangalore, India, that is tackling these pressing challenges in Indian and global farming. “Our mission is to promote farming in a sustainable manner by encouraging more people to go back to agriculture and earn a good living with the support of electric tractors,” said Anoop Srikantaswamy, founder and CEO of Moonrider.

Moonrider is targeting farmers who have the potential to shift the agricultural industry collectively in a cost-friendly and sustainable direction. “India is globally the largest market for tractors, and our main target audience is who we call 'progressive farmers’ - influential farmers in terms of adapting to modern and sustainable agricultural practices,” said Srikantaswamy.

How will Moonrider achieve this? Their answer lies in their electric farm tractors that are distinguishing themselves from diesel and other electric tractors entering the market. “One of the promises we have made to the farming community is that we exceed expectations in terms of performance and cost when you compare it to diesel tractors or other electric tractors. We are doing this by developing our battery packs and technology in-house, eliminating the need for customers to search for third-party accessories,” said Srikantaswamy.

Moonrider sought a robust solution with a full suite of design capabilities to support the process of designing their electric tractors and advanced battery packs. “In this day and age, it is an expectation from customers to have differentiated products and services. We do this through hyper-personalization, which is achieved through design iteration and having a quick feedback loop for the customer. This is why we need a robust business platform to handle all variants,” explained Srikantaswamy.

The team chose to adopt Dassault Systèmes’ technology on the cloud to design and customize its electric tractors. Srikantaswamy has been familiar with Dassault Systèmes since 2009, when he used their solutions in his previous role as a leader in product development and engineering for major automotive manufacturers. “It’s been a decade of association with Dassault Systèmes and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform for me, said Srikantaswamy. “Their combination of domain expertise, industry knowledge and understanding of customer pain points makes them the right partner for us.”

At present, diesel-operated tractors remain noisy, fuel-guzzling machines. “Not a lot of people want to drive diesel tractors because of their loud noise and physical limitations. It takes a lot of strength to operate one,” said Srikantaswamy. “But imagine an economy where people are excited about driving tractors. It would mean a shift toward modern agriculture, far greater productivity, food and nutrition security for the continent, and even financial independence.”

Moonrider seeks to make this a reality by developing sustainable tractors that are designed with comfort in mind and encourage more people to get behind the wheel. “We have specifically received feedback from the farming community that they want a tractor designed to vibrate less. Some diesel tractors vibrate so harshly during operation that it’s hard to drive longer than three or four hours,” said Srikantaswamy. “Such types of requests can be addressed easily with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, and we were able to minimize the vibration by running linear and static motion analysis on our chassis and adjusting our designs,” said Srikantaswamy. 

Moonrider’s battery packs require a much higher voltage architecture than that of other vehicles. “India is largely a two-wheeler and three-wheeler-focused EV ecosystem, which requires at most a 72-volt architecture. In comparison, our electric tractors require a 384-volt architecture. We need larger battery packs, connectors and powertrains and these are not easily available out there, so we’re designing all these in-house from the ground up,” said Srikantaswamy.

The team at Moonrider anticipates that innovation can meet with resistance and questions from customers. When choosing an electric tractor, customers will likely have questions like “How long does its battery last?” and “How many years will this tractor survive compared to other EV tractors on the market?” Moonrider can solidify answers to these questions during the design phase using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform’s integrated capabilities.  “In order to reassure our customers, we have to run several simulations and virtual validations before we start building the battery packs or tractors. The platform’s fluid and thermal dynamics applications help us to estimate the battery packs’ maximum temperature and lifetime,” said Srikantaswamy.

Hosting computationally intensive tasks like virtual battery stimulations on the cloud rather than on-premises eliminates the need for significant upfront hardware investments. “Imagine more than 10,000 components in the battery pack that you need to run simulations and computational fluid dynamics. One of the biggest advantages of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is that all computations happen right on the cloud. With that we’re saving funds that would otherwise go into procuring this additional hardware architecture,” said Srikantaswamy.

Due to the platform’s integrated capabilities, the team at Moonrider has noticed a reduction in the time it takes to get these tasks done. “Given that the 3DEXPERIENCE platform has a full suite from generative design to computation flow dynamics, everyone working on a project can collaborate and work on the same model from anywhere in the world. This has helped us significantly shorten the time to market from concept to customer – we can now design our tractors from concept to prototype in less than 40 days. This is the kind of leverage we get with the platform,” said Srikantaswamy.

Moonrider is growing at a rapid pace and scaling the production of its solutions and services. “Right now, we are about 40 people but soon enough, we’ll be a 120-person organization,” said Srikantaswamy. As they expand, Moonrider will continue to rely on Dassault Systèmes’ sales team to monitor their evolving software needs to streamline new workflows. “We’ve just started using ENOVIA as our product lifecycle management (PLM) software to continue strengthening the digital thread and feedback loop from customer to designer. This will further help to boost productivity and collaboration, and also to manage changes and requests,” said Srikantaswamy.

Looking into the future, the team at Moonrider is steadfast in its mission of enabling sustainable farming practices and boosting farm profitability and productivity. “Five years from now, the ambition is to contribute to the prosperity of our agricultural industry by diving deeper into autonomous vehicle technologies and generative experiences. We plan to adopt further industry solutions within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to optimize our designs using integrated modelling and simulation,” said Srikantaswamy.

“We want to be an integral part of day-to-day farming activities with our sustainable tractors and services, and we have plans to enter Southeast Asian and European markets, where customer needs are different due to varying agriculture terrain. We plan to meet these demands by integrating the whole 3DEXPERIENCE platform suite from design to manufacturing. It’s one of the most collaborative tools you will find in the industry.”