Half the price, because they took things out

An Alberta startup is selling tractors with no touchscreen, no telematics, no connected diagnostics and no subscription. They cost about half what the equivalent machine from a major manufacturer costs. Farmers are buying them.

The easy read is nostalgia, the idea that old tools were better and everything is over-engineered now. The list of what they took out points to dependency.

They removed dependency

Look at what goes when you take the screen out.

The subscription goes. The dealer-only diagnostic tool goes. The failure mode where a sensor dies in a field and the machine will not start goes. The software update that changes the interface you learned three seasons ago goes.

The farmer is paying half price for a machine they can fix, in a field, in October, without asking permission.

The product decision behind it is "remove dependency", which goes further than "make it simpler".

Every feature is a promise you have to keep

The Swiss army knife holds every tool you could need, and almost nobody keeps one in their kitchen. Capability went up and usability went down. The people who carry one are specialists whose work requires all of it, and most people are not specialists.

The tractor is the same trade, priced honestly for once.

A feature is a permanent obligation to maintain it, support it, not break it, and explain it to every new user forever. Most product roadmaps price the build and quietly ignore the obligation.

And the obligation is where the money goes. Half the price is the size of it.

Ask the question honestly

Every feature would be nice. The useful question is would our users pay double for it?, because that is roughly what they are paying.

If the answer is no, you built a tax and called it a feature.

The story is here. Read it, then open your own roadmap and find the line you would cut if cutting it halved your price.