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Comment by MisterBastahrd | Hacker News Reader

Electric garden tools are great as long as you work quickly. I have a walk-behind mower and it has a TON of torque even in super-tall grass. I cannot imagine someone running a landscaping business with them, though. You'd have to double or triple your hauling load just to carry all the batteries you'd need to power them in a workday.

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The charger for the Kobalt mower and grass trimmer from Lowes charges the batteries faster than I can use them. However, the batteries are only good for 30 minutes or so, and the equipment is hardly commercial-grade. The batteries can also be palmed with one hand, so there's room for an upgrade for commercial use.

There's always a drop cord and non-battery options for almost every tool, which I prefer to the inevitable battery degradation (so that makes my leafblower coal and hydro powered). I have an electric leafblower and 2 dropcords. When trucks are electric, problem solved, this can run off the accessory power.

Yep. That new Ford with the big inverter and battery will be a good model to follow; and of course no doubt companies like Milwaukee who have been pushing all sorts of electric stuff lately will come out with good options to add on.

Hell, even just running a 4-stroke generator will be far less polluting.

The operator needs to charge them in the truck, and many trucks come with power points. My neighbour is a builder and he laughs at the guys with big batteries as they lug them about. He carries two or three small ones and switches them out regularly.

Ruined wrists don’t have to be a thing.

If they charge quickly, maybe just have two sets of batteries, and require customers to let you charge the unused ones while you work?

They don't charge all that quickly and I don't think customers want people plugging in battery chargers at their homes, at least I wouldn't. All it takes is one bootleg charger from amazon, or one bootleg battery from amazon (of which there are plenty of examples) and boom nasty battery fire. I would place money on that being a magnitude more likely than a spontaneous fire from combustables in the back of a truck.

EDIT: Let's downvote instead of actually having a proper response. I can't wait until the bubble some of you live in pops and all of this nonsense goes away.

I have a Stihl electric polesaw/weed eater/brush/… combo with a backpack battery. That battery outlasts my ability to use it in a day. Multiple small batteries is an extremely doable solution for a professional.

Also, what you add in battery charging, you easily make up with reduced maintenance of the tool.

Electrics don't have a plugin while working option do they?

Most dont, sans a third party adapter that replaces the battery. It's also implying that a power outlet is readily available, which I imagine with a lot of landscaping it isn't.

But in urban or suburban context a power outlet is never far away.

We're speaking of people doing their lawns after all...

You've never seen landscape crews making their rounds?

New theft target when each one has to carry $8k worth of batteries in the truck/trailer to have enough juice to perform their normal task, which could have been performed by two 10 gallon jugs of gasoline.

Most of the time electric lawn-mowers are just using the mains and are powered through a cable.

These kind of models exist since a very long time, and I was not thinking of any battery model when I wrote my comment.

So the dozens/hundreds of crews are just going to plug in anywhere/everywhere they can? That's not feasible.

They did just that when they were mowing the lawns near my house when I was a kid. They would come to the school, plug in (and unroll partly a big portable extension cord), mow the lawn, move to the upper lawn, plug at a different outlet over there, etc.

If at least they do it everywhere it's possible, that would already be great. Most of the time when I am distressed by the pollution and sound of a blower/mower there is an electrical outlet handy.

Not necessarily, we're talking about lawn care / outdoor maintenance. A lot of the maintenance I see invovles medians, communal areas etc. None of them are powered and would require substantial distances to outlets. When there is an outlet you then have to deal with Whom owns the outlet and pays the bill.

For a single family home, this is fine. For townhomes, larger lot, commercial properties, this isn't as clear.

A friend of mine ran a small landscaping business through college. You'd be surprised how many property owners would not let landscapers in the house to plug in extension cords, use the restroom, etc.

Corded string trimmers and lawn mowers last forever but they never took off because wrangling cords sucks.

They also never took off because the power you can get from the wall just isn't quite enough. They work, but if you compare to an engine or battery they obviously are lacking. I pull out my cordless drill for the biggest holes I need to make because it has more power (for a minute until the battery goes dead...), though there isn't much room between not enough power from the wall and needing a drill press on a more powerful circuit anyway.

For houses, most usually do have access to an electric outlet. I have like 5 around my house on the exterior.

This is the way. Having one installed outside changed so much for the better. The noise and dust that I tend to create is much better dealt with by having doors and windows closed.

That seems odd. In the early 1990s where I grew up in the Midwestern United States corded electric weed eaters (that's what I grew up calling them) and lawn mowers were quite common.

They are out there but a lot of them have moved to batteries due to market demands and more so, building an ecosystem. All the major power tool vendors sell yard tools with their battery compatibility.

I imagine you can get some things corded still. I use battery and corded all the time, but I have gas powered as well.

In a small home (less than 1 acre) I can work around it, on the farm. It's almost all gas. Things like the blower, lawn mower, chainsaws, etc. had bad electric alternatives. We also don't and can't run, 1000 foot electrical cords all over the property.

Corded will always be the better option though. With the drills on the farm, corded offer way more torque! Just make sure you've got isolated circuits for exterior and aren't loading them down or you're popping breakers with a couple of the electric tools plugged in.

Most vehicles produce power and many work trucks can be easily modified to produce more. Simply making a bank of batteries that recharges as you drive should suffice for anyone serious enough to need it.

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