14 January/February 2026 | E-Mobility Engineering Kent Wanner, principal electrification engineer at John Deere, speaks to Will Gray about the challenges of building ruggedised EVs for the agriculture sector Futuristic farming When Kent Wanner was presented with a John Deere Fellowship, noting his globally recognised technical expertise, it was a moment of acknowledgement that connected right back to his roots. Growing up as a self-declared “North Dakota farm kid,” he discovered a love of engineering through tinkering and fixing. He applied it to electronics at college and joined a small company that would be later acquired by the American agriculture giant as soon as he graduated, 29 years ago. It is hard to imagine a better candidate to lead the company’s innovations in electrification. “The farm was a fabulous place to become an engineer – operating equipment, thinking about how things work and understanding how to fix them when they break down,” he begins. “That really got me curious and it’s still what I love about my job today. We do cool things and we apply them to solve some of the biggest challenges on the planet.” Agriculture is, arguably, one of the hardest sectors to electrify. Tough work environments and relentless operational demands mean John Deere vehicles must be rugged, reliable and armed with a wide range of tools. Despite the challenge, the company’s Intelligent Solutions Group – a kind of agricultural skunkworks – has managed to introduce almost one electrified solution per year and is about to ramp that up dramatically. Wanner has been involved in that electrification journey from the very start. Having joined as an electronic design engineer in 1997, he spent his first decade developing electronics for a variety of in-house and customer projects – including an electricpropelled centre pivot irrigation system, which he cites as his first ever electric vehicle. Then, in 2006, he was at the forefront of a project that changed the direction of his career. “It was an electric forklift,” he recalls. “Most of my work until that point had been in 12 and 24 volts, but this was an 80 volt system – which, at the time, we called high voltage! I designed the electronic controls and we had just released it to production when the company was looking to move into higher-voltage electrification. That experience enabled me to be the guy who got in on the ground floor. “It was the transition point that took me from conventional electronics into power electronics and it was a fabulous opportunity. There was very little available in that space at that time, Kent Wanner is an American farm boy turned electrification expert, with careerlong experience working for John Deere (All images: John Deere)
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