John Deere shows a driverless orchard tractor, shaped by a California grower

From the archive. First announced by John Deere, January 2025. Where it stands now: Unknown, as of October 2026, no current source found. Why I saved this: Deere says the electric 5ML cuts fuel costs, maintenance costs and maintenance downtime "all" by about half, with no one on board. What I still want to know is the price and when farmers can order one.

LAS VEGAS, January 2025 — John Deere used CES 2025 to show autonomous machines for orchards, quarries and commercial lawns. Here's what it showed, what it cost, and what went wrong.

Cost and outcome (as of Jan. 28, 2025)

Price: Not disclosed. (Deere)
Deere's claimed saving (electric 5ML): fuel costs, maintenance costs and maintenance downtime "all reduced by about half." (DTN)
Availability: diesel model first; a battery-electric version "will follow." No date given. (Deere)
Customers using it: Deere is running electric 5ML prototypes with customers, DTN reported, but did not say how many. (DTN)

What Deere showed

Deere revealed four autonomous machines: a 9RX tractor for tillage, a 5ML orchard tractor for air blast spraying, an articulated dump truck for quarries, and a battery-electric commercial mower. Some machines will come autonomy-ready from the factory. The perception system will also be sold as a retrofit kit for "certain existing machines," Deere said. Owners run the machines from the John Deere Operations Center Mobile app, which shows live video and alerts them to problems.

Deere's pitch is labor. It cited an American Farm Bureau Federation estimate of roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need filling each year. "There is not enough available and skilled labor to do the work," said Jahmy Hindman, Deere's chief technology officer.

The second-generation kit on the 9RX uses 16 cameras for a 360-degree view. "Seeing further allows us to drive the machines 40% faster and haul implements twice as wide as before," Matt Potter, Deere's director of robotics and mobility technology, told DTN. Deere first showed a driverless 8R tractor at CES in 2022.

The orchard tractor

Orchards are hard for driverless machines. Trees can stand 30 feet tall, and the canopy can block GPS. Deere's answer, DTN reported, is seven cameras plus three LiDAR sensors that map the tractor's position against trees, people, irrigation gear and even beehives. Fierce Sensors' CES report put the camera count at nine.

The diesel 5ML runs at 103 to 128 horsepower. The electric version, up to 130 horsepower, is expected to run eight to 10 hours a charge, according to DTN. "Fuel costs, maintenance costs and maintenance downtime are all reduced by about half," said Igino Cafiero, Deere's director of high-value automation, referring to the electric model.

The grower

Russell Maichel has farmed orchards for 34 years on 3,500 acres near Woodland, Fierce Sensors reported, and consults for farms covering another 14,000. He began working with Deere's engineers two years earlier to evaluate the design. Spraying is often done at night, and drivers wear protective suits against the chemicals.

"I've run all night long," Maichel told Fierce at CES. "… With the labor force as it is, there's no shift change. I struggle with finding qualified employees." He said the farmers he knows care less about price: "It's not cost [they care about] it's efficacy." He hasn't tested the electric model and wonders "if it can last an entire shift."

What went wrong

No price or order date. Deere gave neither for the 5ML or the retrofit kits. Fierce Sensors estimated autonomous tractors at "hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece."
The savings are Deere's estimate. We found no published field data behind the "about half" figure.
The battery question is open. The named grower hasn't tried the electric version.
One named customer. DTN says electric prototypes run "with customers in their orchards," but Maichel is the only grower named in our sources.
What we don't know yet: how many orchards run the autonomous 5ML and what Deere charges for it.

Our follow-up question for John Deere

How many growers are running the autonomous 5ML, and what does the tractor or retrofit kit cost?

Later developments (added Oct. 2026)

In November 2025, Hindman told DTN at Agritechnica that the number of farms running Deere's autonomous tillage system "would round up to 100," and that wider availability for corn and soy growers was "low single-digit years" away. He was not speaking about the orchard tractor. (DTN)
As of Oct. 25, 2026, we found no published price or order date for the autonomous 5ML.

Sources

John Deere, “John Deere Reveals New Autonomous Machines & Technology at CES 2025,” PR Newswire, Jan. 6, 2025. prnewswire.com
DTN/Progressive Farmer, Dan Miller, “Deere Reveals Its Newest Autonomous Technology at CES, Plans to Bring It to More Vehicles,” Jan. 7, 2025. dtnpf.com
DTN/Progressive Farmer, Dan Miller, “Deere Loads 2nd-Generation Autonomy, Battery Tech Into New 5ML Orchard Tractor,” Jan. 28, 2025. dtnpf.com
Fierce Sensors, Matt Hamblen, “A veteran orchard farmer enters the autonomous tractor era,” Jan. 9, 2025. fiercesensors.com
Fierce Sensors, “John Deere grows autonomy with quarry trucks, mowers, tractors to pull orchard sprayers,” January 2025. fiercesensors.com
DTN/Progressive Farmer, Joel Reichenberger, “Deere's Autonomous Tillage Still a Work in Progress,” Nov. 14, 2025. dtnpf.com

Disclosure: [not in copy] Editor placeholder