Chinese equipment brand Zoomlion showed up to this week’s China International Agricultural Machinery Exhibition with a new ultra-high-horsepower hybrid tractor that sets a new benchmark, offering more than 1,600 hp while cutting back on both fuel and fumes.

Zoomlion calls its new 9DX hybrid tractor a radical rethink of what a modern ag unit can be, combining the all-day pulling power of a conventional diesel machine with the efficiency, accuracy, and instant torque benefits of electric drive. The company claims its hybrid setup can reducing fuel consumption, emissions, and deliver lower operating costs, without asking massive industrial farming operations to walk away from diesel entirely.

The tractor itself gets a headline-grabbing 1,600 hp Zoomlion 9DX features an 800V hybrid electric powertrain and continuously variable transmission that delivering a peak torque of 7,200 Nm (~5,300 lb-ft) of torque. Getting all that power to the ground is a four track tank-drive system riding on Zoomlion’s in-house developed 762 mm (~30 inch) wide tracks that are designed to distribute the tractor’s considerable weight for maximum traction and minimum soil compaction. What’s more, the high-traction treads can push the big machine to hit a maximum speed of 40 km/h across grades and slopes of up to 12 degrees.

The 9DX also gets a high-capacity hydraulic system capable of delivering 636 liters per minute of flow (~170 GPM), allowing it to work with some seriously heavy duty implements like ultra-wide seeders and variable-rate fertilizer applicators.

The Zoomlion 9DX was one of several new machines at this year’s exhibition, which hosted more than 3,000 exhibitors and vendors – but the big hp numbers all over the show made an even bigger impression, leading AGCO’s director of global electronic and electrical engineering, Nicolas Meunier, to tell Chinese State news agency Xinhua that the country had moved on from producing mostly low-horsepower tractors to building some seriously large machines.

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