Philip

And what kind of a diesel saving do you make by going hybrid?

Eamon sits in a tractor on top of a pit in a Wexford farmyard.

It's pumping slurry into an umbilical pipe and pushing it under pressure one and a half kilometres away to the field that it's going to be spread in.

So 20%, 30%, 40% saving on diesel?

The tractor engine is running at a constant 1,000 rpm, 35 litres of diesel an hour.

30%, okay.

Bearing in mind that the rule of thumb here is €1,000 will get you one horsepower in most tractors, give me an idea of the price range for these hybrid tractors.

At the other end of the umbilical pipe, Pawdy is driving another tractor back and forth using a low-emission spreader.

His tractor is running just under 1,000 rpm, depending on the terrain, and averaging about 25 litres of diesel an hour.

In his little office perched above his machinery shed, contractor Irvin Rothwell is running his calculator at about 2,000 RPM.

The increase in fuel costs over this week last year is about €75 a tractor a day.

Okay, so you're pricing these to turn people's heads.

That 160 horsepower hybrid engine, how much is that going to be costing in Ireland?

With eight tractors on the go right now, nine hours a day, fuel is costing him €4,200 more a week than last spring.

That's very, very competitively priced, really, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

OK, and one last brief question.

These are all hybrid engines.

How far away is the day of the entirely battery-powered tractor that will do the 18-hour day?

Back in February, what was that costing to fill?