The present invention relates to an agricultural vehicle and a method of operation thereof.
Agricultural vehicles such as tractors, combine harvesters, forage harvesters and like have powerful internal combustion engines that are not operating continuously at their maximum rated power or at a fuel-efficient power level. It has been found that in only about 80% of the time such a vehicle and its driver spend working on a field a substantial amount of the engine power is indeed used. The remaining 20% of the time are spent waiting for other vehicles to finish their jobs, or in auxiliary activities such as maneuvering, coupling and uncoupling implements or trailers. All these activities require only a minute fraction of the power the internal combustion engine is capable of delivering.
Being optimized for high power operation, most internal combustion engines have mediocre efficiencies when running at low power, and considerable economies in fuel might be achieved if efficiency at low power could be improved.