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Comment by tomcam | Hacker News Reader

> landscapers will pass the slight capex cost increase in contract terms

Not slight. I hate the noise but but realistically, you’re talking at least triple costs, and probably more, to go from gas to electric. You need a shit ton of batteries to last each day if you’re a professional landscaper, and that means serious infrastructure to handle all the battery charging.

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I grew up in California, where rain was less of an issue and most landscapers I saw used open-bed pickups with all their tools. I'm currently in Oregon, most landscapers use box trailers to house everything here, which I think might be key to this.

I saw an entertaining Youtuber with a "Solar powered" landscaping business in Florida, using a box truck with a hybrid inverter/solar charge controller/battery system, to recharge his lawn powertools while driving between jobs. I see this as a much more practical solution that just having enough of "proprietary company X" battery. Keep your batteries charging 24/7 while working, essentially. Toss some solar if the climate affords it on top to charge the larger batteries used for your inverter up. Plug in the entire trailer when you get home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93F08kdiOfE

Cover a workmans truck roof in solar, and you'll only get 1-2 kWh per day in good weather.

Thats nowhere near enough for a crew of workers using leafblowers - which can be around 1 kw each. Weed wackers and lawnmowers are the same or more.

It is plenty for a crew of builders using impact drivers, drills, screwdrivers, nail guns, etc. though.

However, if the truck is electric, with a 100kWh battery, the 10-20 kWh used by the workers equipment during the day is a pretty small chunk of the total range.

Ford F150 hybrid (or even the full-electric version) can provide all the electricity needed to charge the spare batteries in the trailer while the crew is working with the main batteries.

Sound is barely above truck idle, way way below the gas-powered equipment noise.

The problem in my area is that an F150 is just not manly enough. Gotta have the F250 or F350. Heck, just the other day I saw a landscaper in my neighborhood using an F450 to haul his 1000 pound box trailer around.

To be fair, do you know what else they are using that truck for when it's not within your eye sight? Maybe they are pulling larger trailers and equipment, but this day it only needed to pull the small trailer.

Also, you act like it is the landscaper's problem for driving the trucks. We haven't even mentioned that fleet deals can be made for the larger trucks so they are actually cheaper than the F150 pricing. That leaves the F150 inventory for the soccer moms.

As if it is a single button that needs to be pushed to "solve"

The landscaper that lives down my street goes up and down the street full throttle without any trailer attached six times per day and several more in the evening. I'm not sure if he believes it contributes to his manliness but the sound of that car is off the scale and should be outlawed.

I have to admit, while the US is technically richer I feel like the country is constantly plumbing the depths of decreasing livability for everyone else by insistence on things like gigantic trucks. The reality is that people usually aren't using them to haul big loads and in fact, due to how heavy the cars are themselves, actually are quite bad at hauling big loads. If challenged on why they need a vehicle of such size, of course suddenly they're hauling multiple tons around every evening.

It doesn't matter what they usually do. It just matters what they occasionally do. For hauling, or range, or number of passengers... people don't buy a vehicle that satisfies their average daily requirements. They buy one that satisfies all the requirements they expect to encounter.

It would make far more sense to spend less and simply rent for the 99th percentile use (which btw most people probably actually never use). The issue with these big trucks is severe negative externalities for other road users and pedestrians - if that didn't exist I would not care at all if people wasted money.

Also these big trucks have really sucky hauling capacity, it's actually a weird part about them that few people seem to note (and confirms my suspicion most people get them for other reasons).

Small pickup trucks used to be popular, when I was a kid most pickup trucks weren't much larger than a station wagon, but the government fucked it up by setting MPG requirements lower for larger trucks, incentivizing manufacturers to go big. At this point consumer tastes have adapted to the market and small trucks probably wouldn't sell well even if the regulations were fixed to make them feasible.

For my part, my tastes never changed. Modern pickup trucks are hideous giant blob abominations. But that's not the way most people feel anymore.

People import kei trucks, even though importing is a pain, so there's some demand for small trucks. If the MPG standards were addressed, I think it'd be a hard sell for a real 80s style small truck (although, I'd buy one), but a 1998-2011 style Ranger is still pretty small. Build it with a c-max/ford fusion PHEV power train +/- RWD, stuff the batteries under the bed (like the 1998-2002 Ford Ranger EV, get pretty good gas mileage and decent EV only range. Doesn't need to be huge.

But they don't let me design cars.

> If the MPG standards were addressed, I think it'd be a hard sell for a real 80s style small truck

They'd just have to be EVs instead of ICE.

The youtuber got 4-5kWh per day on his trailer. It looked like enough to supply most of his needs (all equipment is electric including a zero turn radius ride-on mower). He's only a one-man crew though. A 3-4 man crew would need a different equipment config.

Yeah - I think that is one of the critical pieces in his setup. He can have a (relatively) modest amount of batteries, and cycle through them as he's using all his tools one by one. In a big crew, where each stop every tool is being used non-stop for 30 minutes, then 10 minutes drive to the next home to repeat, batteries won't be able to charge enough. You'd probably need 3x the batteries in that case (which, per-person, is roughly the same I guess).

You watch the Edison Motors shorts on Youtube?

They are making a hybrid diesel electric semi that uses the diesel as a generator. They are getting a lot of inquires from the large work truck related industries because of the capabilities to be a large power source without having to constantly run the engine.

I skimmed through a bunch of Edison Motors videos, and this was the most informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an6e2Lh9u58

The easy solution is an inverter connected to any truck or van's alternator. Solar does not have energy density to realistically work.

Also, contractors can mandate access to an outdoor AC outlet while they work. It’s cleaner power than ICE alternator -> inverter, and also cheaper for the contractors.

Anyway EGo has a whole day backpack battery for this use case. Not sure how heavy/sweaty/uncomfortable it is, but it lets the tools be much, much lighter than ICE versions.

Slight compared to TCV. Labor is (usually) the most expensive part; tooling is a one-time large upfront cost that can be depreciated.

IME, the maintenance is much lower on electric tooling than even quality gas tooling. Batteries will also wear out, but I think this wear-out cost will be comparable to costs for small engine maintenance.

I also don't think the battery tech is ready to replace riding lawnmowers (which use quieter, more efficient, less polluting 4-stroke engines anyways), but perhaps the $BILLIONS of dollars being poured into battery research will yield some improvements.

> I also don't think the battery tech is ready to replace riding lawnmowers (which use quieter, more efficient, less polluting 4-stroke engines anyways)

Well that's the law in California starting 2028. And current tech in riding mowers is just nowhere near what pro landscapers need.

The law clearly says they can’t ban stuff with no feasible commercially available alternatives.

Expect court challenges or an implementation delay if no one has built a good electric contractor-grade mower by 2028.

The consumer-grade ride on ones are apparently pretty good already.

Excellent correction, thank you

I tried a mean green, which is a commercial ev mower. It's nice, better than an ego or whatever, but nothing next to a walker or toro

I've seen contractors use batteries pretty effectively. They just plug in gang chargers and have batteries charging all the time.

also, california has a bill stopping sales small gas-powered engines after 2024 (such as leaf blowers and lawn mowers)

Imagine the competitive advantage of a lawn maintenance company that advertises their all-electric tools - "Your neighbor won't hate you by the time we leave".

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