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Comment by tempestn | Hacker News Reader

My only quibble is that electric lawn mowers today are rather better than "same, but electric". Battery electric mowers can run forever with a single spare battery because the batteries charge faster than they're drained. And my Ego push mower will also fold up to store vertically, which is great with limited garage space. Plus it starts every time at the push of a button, no trips to the gas station, maintenance, tough starts, etc.

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Yeah. I don't think I can explain how awesome it is to be liberated from a bucket of gas in the garage to make it through the yard. That it also stores nicely and I can use the same battery for a chainsaw and weed eater? Battery powered devices really did get usable while people were not paying attention.

I think this speaks to a similar problem with BEV adoption. Plenty of people tried them, or read a ton of press about them back in 2016-2018, when they really weren't all that great. People now hold onto those ideas, not realizing how much they've improved in the short years in between.

The first battery lawn mowers were terrible. Today's are excellent.

Yeah, this is what I meant by saying that they got good. I remember the first batch of battery screw drivers/drills. Could do basic work, but that was about it. Now, my blower, chainsaw, mower, and weed eater are all battery. And all work great.

Having an ecosystem of batteries + tools is great. The question is which of the endless ecosystem options (ryobi, dewalt, milwaukee, bosch, etc.) to pick

I bet you can make adaptors for those different batteries.

Just don't short them accidentally. And check the voltage and charge/discharge power. And maybe check the thermal probe still works.

https://youtube.com/c/ProjectFarm

Tons of reviews of battery powered tools. My priorities led me to Milwaukee for power tools (not hand tools), YMMV. Great channel though.

Nthing this. ProjectFarm is an impressive, objective, numbers based review of all sorts of tools and lubricants. The guy looks like your average farmer, but he covers pretty much every real world use case and is always impressively thorough, with the knowledge of someone who has actually used tools/products like that in the field. He also does some amusing things like lubricating a lawn mower with bananas.

Surprised the EU hasn’t addressed this.

Yeah, they've addressed phone and car chargers, that'd be a logical next step.

This problem isn't on the political radar yet. Give it time.

Also portable solar panels for direct DC charging of these batteries.

Just a personal recommendation for domestic use. I use two Bosch 36V 4.0AH batteries for their mower, strimmer, and leaf blower. For long tasks, I put the first battery on charge as soon as depleted and switch to the second one. I haven't been without juice so far.

What I did when I needed to bridge the gap: https://www.stlfinder.com/3dmodels/milwaukee-to-ryobi-adapte...

Be wary of, or careful when using, these dumb adapters. Lithium batteries require protection electronics, in particular ones to shut off the tool when the battery reaches too high a temperature or the cells reach too low a voltage. Most manufacturers put the electronics in the tool, using the connector's other conductors to sense the battery's condition. Since these cheap adapters don't also adapt the sensing electronics and conductors, the electronic safety is substantially or completely disabled. If the battery's user doesn't take as much care as the tool's electronics would have, there is a great increase in the probability of premature, and possibly incindiary, battery failure.

> Having an ecosystem of batteries + tools is great. The question is which of the endless ecosystem options (ryobi, dewalt, milwaukee, bosch, etc.) to pick

Dead dinosaurs is basically the universal tool battery for larger tools.

Like everything, in a few years we'll standardize around the most mediocre option.

Yes! I have an electric mower as well as an electric weed whacker that takes the same batteries. My favorite aspects are that they don't vibrate the hell out of my RSI-inflamed elbow and don't cover me in 2-stroke exhaust. Yes, my electric yard tools are superior in every aspect to a gas ones. I've even managed to convince some of my neighbors to switch to electric and the resulting reduction in neighborhood noise levels has been GREAT!

I don't have a leaf blower. Leaf blowers are stupid noisy and not any faster than a good rake.

My electric leaf blower is actually not very loud - I stopped bothering with ear protection even. The 2-stroke models the professional crews use are a bane.

Yeah, I'm a fan of my electric blower too. I don't generally use it in situations where I'd use a rake, but it's great for things like blowing debris out of the garage or cleaning off a patio. Also drying cars after washing, if you want to avoid water spots.

Funnily enough, lawns are not very eco friendly. The uniform green looks of them are water intensive and a food desert for local insects. Putting a mix of local flora might be even better if environment is what you are concerned for.

I think we can presume that this is widespread knowledge at this point.

Alternatively get a robot mower - does the job better, takes even less space and effectively requires no work/maintenance, aside replacing the blades every few months.

Are there any that work like robot vacuums? I mean NO funny cables around a garden that show robot a no go zone? I want robot to build a map of garden just like Roborocks.

I have had ideas to build a GPS based prototype on my own as a hobby project (both the hardware and software)... other than that I don't know of commercially viable ones.

However, in practice the cables are no issue - you can have them installed and dug in the soil rather trivially (the cable is shot in). Once done - you'd never notice them ever again. No go zone can be organized with magnetic strips (also buried).

Roomba was developing a system without a boundary wire at some point, but it doesn’t look like they ended up shipping it.

Not sure why nobody else is working on it. Could it be that the ToF sensors in indoor robot vacuums are just not powerful enough to operate in sunlight?

Maybe it’s because the boundary wire installation is a matter of minutes and only needs to be done once?

The boundary wire was not a matter of minutes for me - far from it, more like half a day - but that's because I wanted to bury it out of sight.

I guess they still rely on boundary wire because it's very reliable - you don't want a couple unlucky GPS readings to cause your robot mower, armed with very real spinning blades, to end up in the neighbor's yard or on the street and hurt somebody.

I made the same mistake the first time as well, took forever to get it installed underground by hand. The second time I paid like 100 euros for the full-service package where they showed up with a cable-laying machine and it literally took the guy more time to unload the machine from the van than it took him to circle the property and lay the cable.

The bigger headache with boundary cables is finding and fixing any cuts that might happen when doing unrelated yardwork.

>finding and fixing any cuts that might happen when doing unrelated yardwork

this is also easy if you have decent electronics equipment... or it's built in the mower, itself, where you can select to follow the line till the break.

>far from it, more like half a day - but that's because I wanted to bury it out of sight.

>>dug in the soil rather trivially (the cable is shot in)

From my previous comment. Look for "Cable Laying Machine" rent; it's around 60euro/day here.

> Maybe it’s because the boundary wire installation is a matter of minutes and only needs to be done once?

Yeah, unless you have a dog that wants to dig stuff up.

Yeah, might do that eventually. At the moment I kind of enjoy mowing the lawn. I listen to a podcast or audiobook, give my brain a break.. Also will pick weeds and such as I go, which the robot can't.

and removing the dead hedgehogs from the yard.

https://www.wired.com/story/robot-lawnmowers-are-killing-hed...

This is such an odd article. What about a robotic lawnmower leads to hedgehog death that is different than a human powered one?

I didn't read the article, but I'm guessing humans are better at spotting the hedgehogs?

>better at spotting the hedgehogs

At night, dusk? Hedgehogs are nocturnal.

That would explain dead hedgehogs as most of these autonomous mowers operate at night.

Robot mowers frighten me. It's one thing to have a vacuum cleaner blindly stumble around - there's only so much damage it can do. But whirling blades up the lethality stakes a lot. The navigational and object-avoidance prowess of Roombas do not convince me that arming them with samurai swords is wise.

Who empties the grass box?

it's discharged on the lawn, itself, obviously. No box. Since it's everydays jobs the cuts are really short. The lack of external discharge is better for the lawn.

You shouldn't have one. The grass breaks down if you have your grass mowed to a proper height. Your lawn won't look like a golf course though. which is a good thing, golf courses are an environmental disaster.

Unless, of course, you live in an HOA which requires you to not leave your clippings on the lawn. If only there was a place round here where there wasn't an HOA!

There are no clippings in the way they mean.

The robomover cuts the lawn so often so there is just a fine mulch that disappears below the lawn (and fertilizes it).

I have heard stories about your rabid HOA, but they can't have a problem with that?

It’s reached the point where I now look at people using two stroke lawn mowers and instinctively think its weird that they’re using such crude and uncivilized technology. The noise alone is a reason to switch, imho.

There are some people who are "nerdy" in a different way, and actually like the noise, for example. Different strokes for different folks :)

And live in a neighborhood were everybody else is "nerdy" about the noise?

Nobody ever said there was a neighborhood :)

Fair enough.

two stroke mower? Where do you live? In the US, the only major brand selling two stroke motors was lawn boy, and I can't remember the last time I saw one of those. They were always a bit odd.

Just about any mower you see is 4 stoke, which is far cleaner.

two strokes are brush cutters, tend to be. They are no push mowers, though... and electric ones are absolutely no replacement due to sheer lack of power (or battery life).

@grand parent - Mowing ditch/stream slopes with anything but petrol brushcutter is just next to impossible. Saying that as owning - a battery strimmer, a 4-stroke petrol push mower, a battery robot mower and 2-smoke brush cutter. I have tried using even a battery powered hedge trimmer. In other words - not everything is a nice flat rectangle short grass cover.

I honestly assumed they were two stroke. The last lawn mower I used at my parents house was two stroke IIRC (smelled like it at least), and I never bought a gas mower once I bought a house. I went straight to electric.

Oh, yeah, I didn't even think of the (lack of) noise. Can easily listen to a podcast or whatever while I mow.

And I have a good old fashioned manual cylinder mower that I push along and think? Why on earth do people need electricity?

I've used one of those for the last several years, it's terrible if you get behind even a little bit, the long grass doesn't make it into the knife. I'm gonna a buy a battery mower this year.

Depends on the size of your yard and how quickly it grows. My current yard is on the edge where power is a nice to have, my parents’ old yard would have taken hours to do with a non-powered motor.

I know I'm going to sound like an unpleasant person, but I now get that same feeling every time I drive by a petrol station (with my electric car).

My mowers getting on 10 years old now. It's probably gonna do another ten. I don't like waste. I'll probably try convert it to run off ethanol. I'd buy more battery gear if it wasn't designed to be so wasteful and the market wasn't full of so much lock in. Getting stuck in one brands battery goes against alot of my ethics re. Tech purchases. I hate vendor lock in.

My Ego mower is 8 years old now. (I got one as soon as they were available in Canada, as it was the first mower to operate at >40V.) Still works like new. Don't think they're inherently any more wasteful than gas. And of course, they don't waste gas. Yeah, you're locked into the battery, but at worst, if you don't use the battery for anything else, that's no worse than the gas mower. With a few tools though (leaf blower, string trimmer, maybe hedge trimmers...) you end up saving a bunch.

Also bought an Ego when we moved into our first home and I love it for all the reasons you mentioned and more. It's fantastic.

The only gas item I still have to keep around is the snow blower as we get a significant amount of snow. Fortunately I really don't run it that much at all over the course of the year. Maybe 5 gallons of gas a year. But when I need it, I really need it.

Just in case you didn’t know - Ego has a 2-stage snowblower in their system as well.

(I’m guessing everyone who has one Ego device is interested in more tools to defend the investment in batteries. Like myself.) ;-)

Oh yeah very interested! Unfortunately we do have about $1500 invested in our current machine, so it would be hard to justify. It works very well too. But if we ever have problems with it or it dies out we'll definitely make the switch.

You’re not missing out, paid like 1500 for the machine, another 900 for 2 10ah batteries then ran over a newspaper day one while helping the in-laws. This promptly broke the thing, main shaft wouldn’t turn anymore. Contacted ego who asked for some vids which I sent, they wanted me to bring it 1.5 hrs away which I wasn’t interested in so they they shipped me a new one. Finally got it 3 days after the very last snow storm. So yea, I switched to electric this year for the snow and got lots of exercise this last year. The issue I’ve got with them is it’s driven off a gearbox that honestly doesn’t seem too strong where’s a gas powered shaft is coupled to the engine via a couple of belts that can be serviced with basic tools at home in the mists of dealing with snow, the ego absolutely can not.

> Battery electric mowers can run forever with a single spare battery because the batteries charge faster than they're drained.

The problem with electric tools is that the battery life heavily depends what you're doing. I also have an Ego mower (the top model/largest battery as of 2020). The only way my battery might actually last the advertised hour (with a ~40 min charge time) is if I religiously mowed twice a week. I'm usually lucky to get 30 minutes of real world mowing, but sometimes it's less than half of that. I used to prefer mowing in the morning to avoid the heat, but any amount of moisture in the grass slaughters the battery life. Likewise if the grass is higher than normal, say goodbye to the battery life. All in all my electric mower is quite a bit inferior to a decent quality gas mower, but not inconvenient enough (so far) to push me to switch back.

Huh, certainly not my experience. Maybe it's because the mower is bigger? I've got one of their smaller ones, and two medium/small batteries (one 4Ah and one 2Ah iirc), and never have problems, even with damp grass. Only on the most overgrown day have I gone through both batteries, and thrn the first one was charged and ready.

I have childhood memories of how much of a pain it was to get our gas mower started. And stinky.

Ha ha, me too. I confess though that modern gas mowers I have owned have been much easier to start. Maybe it's because I'm not a kid anymore ... or they are making the engines better.

My next mower will be electric though.

You know, that reminds me of the other fun part. Because it was gas the mower was stored in a shed in the back yard. A shed full of thousands of really large spiders.

my non-electric mower folds up and stores vertically, so this isn't that unique. strange that this is something called out in gas vs battery discussion

It’s generally not a good idea to store a gas mower with a tank of gas in it (plus oil) on its side or on its end for a long period of time.

Do we mean the same thing by "vertically"? What model is your mower? I'm surprised a gas engine could be stored on its side.

I don't know the exact model of my mower, but here's a similar model from Home Depot[0]. I don't really know what other meanings of vertical you can come up with, but the implication that I don't know what vertical means is quite insulting.

[0]https://www.homedepot.com/p/Troy-Bilt-XP-21-in-149-cc-Vertic...

Unless he edited his comment, he didn't imply that you don't know what "vertical" means, but rather that you could have different ideas about what it means to store a lawn mower vertically.

How many meanings of vertically do you use?

One meaning, per my earlier comment, but that doesn't imply exactly one permutation for the folding and storage of a lawn mower. Anyway, this is not a very interesting topic, so I'll see myself out.

Yeah, exactly. Perhaps the handle just stacked 'vertically' above the mower body. Or maybe the body somehow folded in half with the motor perched above it or something. As it turns out it does indeed just store on its end with the engine sideways, but I didn't think the question was unreasonable.

No need to be insulted; I was just trying to get clarification, since as I mentioned, I wasn't aware of gas engines that could be stored on their side. Your link shows they do appear to exist though!

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