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Comment by adamswann | Hacker News Reader

The ban is on gas-powered leaf blowers. I’ve switched to all electric yard tools at home. No regrets; the tools are durable, can easily handle the whole job on a single charge, quiet enough that I feel comfortable letting my children assist (they can hear my instructions and generally what’s going on around them), and no gas engines to maintain.

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Agreed. My Ego battery-powered leaf blower is one of my favorite tools. I use it to clean all around the outside of my house, especially the porches. In just a few minutes it will scour the dirt and cobwebs from every nook and crack, and it blows the dirt right out the thin outdoor carpet that covers my porch. It will clean my outdoor shelves of dust and grime, as long as I stand back far enough so that it doesn't take out my things on the shelves. I wear a dust mask.

I also have Ego's lawn mower and weed whacker. The mower is fucking amazing. It's so quiet that you often can't hear it inside the house, and easily powerful enough as long as I don't try to mow wet grass. I can do my entire ~3000 sq meter yard on two batteries, which take just a moment to switch out.

Same with the weed whacker. I have a second home in the mountains where I maintain the grounds solely with the weed whacker. I can throw it in my car with an extra battery or two, drive up there, and trim up the entire place in a couple hours. I feel like I'm living in the future.

Best part about electric blowers is you can use them inside safely. I love using my ego leaf blower for spring cleaning the wardrobes, and it’s a brilliant way to shift all the mess and crud from under your car seats.

Love my Ego tools. Bought the mower because I wanted to be able to stow it vertically for space.

Yes! This is my favorite way to dust. On a windy day I'll open some windows to allow a cross-breeze, and then blast my shit with the blower. I have to mind my distance, and be careful to secure lighter objects. It makes quick work of floors, under furniture if there's at least a little space, and my shelves full of bins.

You and I are now friends.

The real issue IMO is that the battery powered yard tools are infected by the same planned obsolescence as existing power tools. Most gas-powered yard tools last damn near forever even if you don't do maintenance on them. The battery powered ones are good for three years and then you're buying a new one. If you're lucky they still make the battery, but it costs as much a whole new tool.

Wish we could standardize modern rechargeable batteries the same way we did with old lead acid models.

Am I missing something? Most Bosch tools for instance use their universal battery packs, they fit nearly all old tools and it's a pretty safe bet that they will fit all the new ones too. There's plenty of 3rd party replacements on the market, but there's almost zero chance that you won't be able to buy a replacement battery for your bosch leaf blower in few years.

That's their standardised battery pack - it fits dozens of different tools: https://www.bosch-do-it.com/gb/en/diy/tools/battery-pack-pba...

I have two Ryobi drills and they have what look like standardized swappable batteries, but they are different voltages (12V and 18V). The connectors are different shapes, fortunately.

> If you're lucky they still make the battery, but it costs as much a whole new tool.

Aren't most companies working on a standardized battery (at least within their brand) so you can swap batteries between your drill, blower, trimmer, etc? It would seem that if that's the case, changing battery form factors would be a real bad idea.

(within their brand)

That's the kicker. I have DeWalt, Makita, and Rigid brand electric tools. They all have different, incompatible (yet same voltage/amp) batteries and chargers, each costing as much as the tool. At least gas goes in any gas tool.

I'd rather they be regulations on the amount of pollution (both air and noise) allowed.

I'm fine with regulation as long as zero is the amount of CO2 pollution allowed. We need to be in crisis mode now.

Yep, they do. Within their own brand. Just means when they switch from 18V to 20V, and then to whatever the next big thing is, you have to switch all of your tools to the new standard.

Lithium-Ion batteries have a much longer lifetime than the old NiMH batteries, though. Haven't had much issues with electric power tools in the last couple of years.

And I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of the reliability of gas powered tools. Our lawn mower needed repairs frequently...

The dratted carburetor... next time mine clogs again, I’m jumping to an electric. They’re finally wide and powerful enough that they’re better than gas for actually mowing.

All the major tool companies use battery platforms that have been stable for much of the decade. I've used Dewalt 20v Max tools since 2011 and never broken one. Ego's yard tools were introduced in 2013, and the battery interface has not changed since. I have their mower, leaf blower, and two weed whackers, operating for over four years with zero problems. I haven't even had to replace any batteries.

Meanwhile, my neighbor's expensive new gas-powered mower has been in the shop twice in the past few years. When it does work it's loud and smells like shit.

Many rechargeable battery packs are just assemblies of 18650 or similar cylindrical cells — if they just made the packs openable then it would be easy to replace and recycle the cells.

If only an "18650" was always the same! Despite the name, they're never exactly 18.0mm diameter by 65mm long. Some have protection circuits built in, some don't. Some have solder tabs, some have wired connections (2-pin or 3) and some fit into holders the way your garden variety AA battery does. Then there are a variety of capacities and charge curves. 18650 Li-Ion is not a standard the way that a AA alkaline is. The core can may be "standard" but by the time that gets packaged into a cell in a product, there are an infinite variety of options.

The cells are welded together with contact strips, you need a spot welder to rebuild a pack. Making cells removable isn’t economic, because vibration resistant electrical connections are not cheap.

> Making cells removable isn’t economic

I disagree. Until relatively recently all battery powered devices had removable batteries, which is why we have standard battery sizes in the first place. Welded and sealed proprietary battery packs are a backward step.

The keyword here is "cell", not pack. I have never seen individual cells being removable. Imagine the increased complexity/cost and decreased reliability if each of the 6 cells in a standard car batter was individually replaceable.

> I have never seen individual cells being removable

Sure you have. Any device with removable single-cell 'batteries' has removable cells.

> Imagine the increased complexity/cost and decreased reliability if each of the 6 cells in a standard car batter was individually replaceable.

Car batteries are already removable and replaceable, and come in standard sizes, which is precisely the point.

While I agree that it's reasonable to make 18650 based packs not officially user serviceable (because of the spot welding thing and because that would open up liability to repairs gone wrong), at least they should be made so the cells can be replaced by someone who has a spotwelder and some electrical knowledge. Basically give the pack housing a nondestructive way to be opened and resealed.

That way even if the manufacturer decides to switch battery pack standards in a few years, someone with the necessary knowledge can still get some 18650 cells and be fine.

As the years have worn on its gotten better. Still not great yet, and interoperability would be even better... but I have standardized on the 20V line from De Walt and have a number of hand, larger power, and yard tools that all use the same batteries. I buy a new battery or two every year and cycle out the oldest one (sell at steep discount on CL). Been doing that for 6 years now, and I don’t see them discontinuing the 20V line for years.

I'm on my third generation DeWalt, but I also switched over to the 20V Max line a few years back when my second-to-last 18V battery croaked and the replacement was $100. Was more economical to ditch the old drill.

I don't think this is true at all. A visit to Home Depot reveals a huge selection of battery powered tools, most of which are powered by one of four standard battery types, all of which have existed for quite a while. I have a whole bunch of Ryobi tools - and batteries from literally a decade ago, while an older chemistry (nicad instead of li-ion) are still compatible - and the reverse is also true.

I'm on my third generation of DeWalt drill. Not because the old ones don't work (in fact, the second generation is rather preferable to the third generation of the same model), but because the batteries are $100+ each now.

Sure. But the issue is professional gardeners -- including those who just have a pickup truck and and a few dozen clients. It's not just "handle a job on a full charge" since they need to work all day. The Stihl backpack batteries help a lot, but it's still going to be a lot of investment for a guy who just takes care of lawns for a living.

Yeah it totally sucks when you were accustomed to externalizing your business costs onto others but now you have to pass those costs on to your customers. I mean sucks for the customers, not for you (you earn the same) or for the people no longer paying those costs (with their hearing loss).

Me? I don't employ anyone to blow my leaves so I'm a winner in this transaction.

Well this is pretty much the model of most industries, and especially with energy, the oil gas and coal industries.

As for one person’s choice, I wish all my neighbors would make the same choice.

All you need is to have a battery that takes less time to charge than discharge during normal usage. Then you have one charging from the truck or local mains power while you're using the other and whenever it runs down the other is charged and you can swap them.

don't big truck have a power outlet from the engine? I think welders are plugged into the engine.

I'd share some concern about transition, in particular because I live in Arizona, but I guess things will be better in the long run.

And now guess how the trucks are powered? Now you use a cobustion engine to power an alternator to charge a battery. What is the net gain, if any?

It's a more efficient engine, with better particulate filters, a catalytic converter to reduce NOx emissions, and yearly emissions inspections to ensure all of the above is up to standards. It's a gain.

"More efficient" is not a binary thing. Taking an efficient engine that's capable of throwing two tons of steel down a highway at 100 mph and using it to charge a lithium ion battery is like killing an ant with a sledgehammer.

An F150 consumes ~2 litres of fuel an hour at idle and provides 400 watts of power through its outlet. A Bosch leaf blower is 2400 watt. Petrol powered leaf blowers do not use 12 liters of fuel an hour.

Sure, the emissions in some ways will be lower, but it's not an unambiguous gain and it's not anything close to an environmentally friendly way to run a leaf blower.

This is clearly a niche for PHEVs or BEVs.

> An F150 consumes ~2 litres of fuel an hour at idle

Where'd you get this number? AFAICT this is not true.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+gas+per+hour+idling...

More like a little less than 1 liter for a 4.6L V8 motor.

Your link says 0.5-0.7 gallons for the 4.6L V8, which is 1.9-2.6 liters.

Ford is promising to produce a hybrid F150 that would upend your green calculus entirely.

> This is clearly a niche for PHEVs or BEVs.

(And yes it would, and that's great!)

Trucks don't use shitty two-stroke engines.

yes, less noise, and less pollution (by the economy of scale).

Same reason why EVs are a net win even if they are ultimately powered by coal.

My impression is that pollution scales roughly linearly with the size of a power plant, while power output scales exponentially.

I recently purchased an electric mower after my old gas powered one died -- repairing it was going to cost as much as just buying a new one.

It's so good. It has turned a dreadful experience into a long slightly noisy walk in my yard.

I used to have a number of minor breathing problems when mowing my lawn, mostly due to the exhaust. No longer having to deal with smelly, burning chemicals is absolutely awesome. I ended replacing almost all of my other yard tools with an electric equivalent as soon as I could.

This is a major change since I last tried electric (and especially battery powered) yard tools, which were flimsy, low powered and died quickly. The modern ones are quite good for most things and since I'm more inclined to use them, I end up dealing with easier to mow/chop/trim yard stuff than before.

Upon reflection, using the gas powered equipment today feels like barbarism.

OK, we added gas power to the title above.

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