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by euroderf 5 days ago
If electric lawnmowers offered the same value, operational convenience, and maintainability (compared to gas-powered mowers) as electric cars do, they'd sell like hotcakes. Two-stroke engines are a PITA.
2 comments

My father originally had a 100% manual lawnmower, and for the size of our property, it wasn't really bad; my father is a physically fit dude, and he could knock out the whole thing in a short period.

Then in the late 80s, he purchased an electric lawnmower! Yep it wasn't battery-powered, but it had a little AC cord that you plugged in... somewhere! So Dad would just run a ginormous snake of an extension cord out across the lawn.

Now, our property wasn't large, but to reach an AC outlet, we really needed a lot of cord, and of course it was a key skill to not run over your own cord, like when you're vacuuming.

Dad never got anything gas-powered. He also had an edger that was electric, IIRC, and he made a lot of use of this edger. It was one of those kinds that used a fishing-line type cutting edge.

But he kept that machine around, and I guess it was fine for a very long time. Dad and Mom are old enough to employ a landscaping team, nowadays.

I thought this already happened?

I kept seeing YouTube videos of people reviewing electric chainsaws or snowblowers or whatever and apologizing to their core audience that they weren't woke Democrats, it was just a better tool for many uses.

This definitely happened, all my yard/lawn items (mower, chainsaws, hedgers, etc) are all battery. So much better.
I can see a hedger working - even with a klunky battery making it a bit unwieldy. But chainsaws and mowers need serious torque - don't so don't they need to stay plugged in while you work ?
I have an Ego pushmower. It takes like 2/3 of a charge to mow my lawn, with a 4 year old 5 amp hour battery.

I'm not saving money over gas, but I'm not spending a whole lot more and the lack of hassle is fantastic.

If I had a bigger yard I would hesitate to have lots of batteries or whatever.

I also have an EGO mower, and in addition to the advantages you list, I would add that they’re less noisy and you don’t end up breathing exhaust fumes. I don’t even understand why anyone would use a petrol mower at this point, except for some edge cases like professionals mowing multiple lawns per day.
There are some decent battery electric mowers and chainsaws that can be great as long as you have the batteries to keep them going long enough.