Do the electric mowers have a performance advantage over gas in thick grass?
Do the electric mowers have a performance advantage over gas in thick grass?
I mowed the yard at our new house once with my John Deere gas walk behind mower and decided to go electric. I found a Ryobi push mower with a 6Ah batery on FB marketplace 20 mins away for $150 and pulled the trigger. Now I have enough batteries to mow the lawn and do the trimming with the Ryobi string trimmer and not have to re-charge in between. 10/10 would reccomend the swap to battery powered lawn equiptment.
So, here, spend my money. For $399, I can get an Ego 21-inch push mower. It's supposedly good for 45 minutes with a 5 Ah battery. I can usually mow our lawn in about half an hour–and, really, I often just skip the back as we have a thick tree canopy. Plus I have a 2.5 Ah battery for our Ego chainsaw.
Am I missing anything by not going with the more expensive option? I do like the simplicity of no gearbox.
Thanks.
I also like the fact that it folds up for storage. Does it really park on its end as promised?
When my Honda mower dies. But given it is a Honda probably not for another 20 years...
I have a decent sized yard, and I have both a lawn tractor/mower and a self-propelled walk-behind mower to do the edges, both gas. Both are hand-me-downs from my parents that gave them to me when I moved (in reality, my dad just wanted an excuse to upgrade). Both are 20+ years old and I've maintained them over the years and they still have plenty of life left in them. When the walk-behind kicks the bucket, I'll likely go electric, since it gets used less than the tractor. The tractor however is a big time-saver. I can cut the whole lawn in less than half the time of the walk-behind. Ride-on electric mowers are still pretty expensive, but there will likely be one in my future someday.
As far as the smaller, two-stroke stuff, I've already started converting to electric. I replaced my gas chainsaws with a Kobalt 80V 18" bar saw and it's great. My trimmer and blower are still 2-stroke machines, but when they go, they will be replaced with electrics.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
Is it brushless? That's pretty much the only upgrade worth paying for.
When do you move to an electric lawn mower?
When the truth is found
to be lies
and all the joy
within you dies!
I’ve worked on a few of the electric ride on’s. All were consumer level machines.
Small no name controllers, undersized wiring, low part availablablity, and failure prone input sensors have been the biggest problems so far.
Batterys are a thing people forget about. Conventional lead acid batteries and agms usually last from four to six years. Cost about a grand to replace.
The cub cadets seem nicer than others I’ve seen.
A lot of the lithium batteries that go in things like this are unproven, as of yet.
I would hold off a few years before looking to get one. Just my experience, your mileage may vary.
If I'm reading this correctly, the brushed motor will go "up to" 45 minutes with the 5 Ah battery while the brushless motor is said to last up to 60 minutes with the same battery. Hmmmm.
We have a lot of trees. I don't mind going down an inch in deck width.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
I'd buy the brushless one. My pressure washer is brushless and is a monster. The brushless mower will be better.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
This is my actual mower:
I can only imagine the one you're looking at with more volts and more Amp hours to be even better.
I would love to go electric, but the thing that keeps stopping me is the never-ending torrent of free gas mowers that need 30 seconds worth of cleaning the bowl and they JUST. WON'T. DIE.
My last one was an old Honda from the 80s with the aluminum deck. It had mowed for so long that it finally started burning oil and the aluminum deck corroded through. I now have a Husqvarna that I got cheap at an auction sale basically new. Just three days ago I picked up another Honda for free that looks maybe 5 years old and runs perfectly. My B-I-L gave me a Toro last week which I gave to a charity.
I will convert eventually. Just not yet.
In reply to Javelin :
Thanks and hmmmm.
The fact that it stores on its end is intriguing, too. Right now, I have to move a car in order to get the lawn mower out of the garage. If I could find a better place to park a mower on its end, that would also be way cool....
David S. Wallens said:In reply to Javelin :
Thanks and hmmmm.
The fact that it stores on its end is intriguing, too. Right now, I have to move a car in order to get the lawn mower out of the garage. If I could find a better place to park a mower on its end, that would also be way cool....
Get a cover and park it outside? Do the stand it on its end thing on the outside wall of the garage with the top edge of the cover permanently mounted on the wall. Heck-now youve got me thinking about some sort of flip up box on the ouside of the structure supported by car hatch struts. That of course led to the idea of scoring a busted bottom cartop carrier off of facebook marketplace, mounting it against the wall as a lean to cover, permanately running an extension cord to a charger in there, throwing some Ego graphics on it and calling it an upgrade.
You move to an electric when it takes longer to get the gas mower started than it does to mow the lawn.
In reply to MrJoshua :
They offer a cover, but it says for indoor use only.
But, yeah, some kind of little shed or lean-to....
mtn said:Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:To answer the original question... when i can sit on it and mow 60" wide for two hours.
Looked at these yesterday. The future is expensive! They cost $29k (roughly double what Gravely charges for a top of the line gas ZTR), and the batteries only have a 3 year warranty.
Electric push mowers seem about equal to the gas competition, but the commercial ZTR stuff still seems to carry a hefty price premium. The reduced maintenance and fuel costs, and potential for increased uptime might let the EV pay for itself at some point for commercial guys, but for private use that's going to be a stretch.
David S. Wallens said:If I'm reading this correctly, the brushed motor will go "up to" 45 minutes with the 5 Ah battery while the brushless motor is said to last up to 60 minutes with the same battery. Hmmmm.
We have a lot of trees. I don't mind going down an inch in deck width.
There are a couple brushless models in the ego line (2133, 2142, 2021, 2135). I've got an old brushed model and it's been fine, stores on its back wheels and folds easily. Looks like acme sells refurbs but no real deals on the brushless ones right now.
In reply to STM317 :
Right now I feel like the market should mainly be high end golf courses/country clubs.
It does store nicely upright, I store mine upright and it's a novel advantage of electric that I didn't appreciate previously.
dclafleur said:It does store nicely upright, I store mine upright and it's a novel advantage of electric that I didn't appreciate previously.
My Ryobi stores upright, and I agree. It takes less time to fold it and put it in its spot than it did to finangle the gas Honda into its spot and put away the gas tank. I'm not trying to paint this as a gigantic benefit to the electric - it is a small bonus, but as another comparison it was quicker to put the commercial Sarlo that I used growing up into its spot than it is to fold up and stow the electric - but it is nice if you're spacially limited.
One potential source of annoyance that I just thought of: I've long wanted to get a little shed for the mower and rakes and everything. If I did that, I'd have to either move the battery in and out of the shed or run electric to my hypothetical shed.
Definitely not a deal breaker for me, but something to think about.
My gas Toro is 18 years old and works just fine. When (if?) it dies I'll look into an electric mower but that'll depend on how much yard I have at the time...
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