In the past, electric drive systems had a hard time asserting themselves, in addition to the costs and the wide range of power requirements, the main reason for this was the lack of potential of electric drives in terms of device functionality. Currently and in the future, however, three trends, the availability of battery-electric tractors, the use as an electric functional drive in implements and the use of autonomous field units will change this. In this article, these three trends are presented in more detail and it is shown that the use of electric drive systems for agricultural machinery represents a future-proof development direction.