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Comment by bjt2n3904 | Hacker News Reader

> Proponents of the law users of electric power equipment will save money over time because the amount of electricity used to charge the batteries or power the equipment is cheaper than the cost of fossil fuels for comparable usages.

...if that was truly the case, then wouldn't battery powered equipment have won the market already?

The fact of the matter is I have battery powered lawn equipment. It barely can handle my 1/4 acre yard before giving out. Recharging the batteries takes hours, and the batteries love to flake out and refuse to charge.

If I was a lawn care company, I'd be livid.

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In particular, I'm skeptical of the real expected cost savings over time. Electricity is cheaper than gasoline, but batteries for portable equipment tend to be very expensive, and how long do they last? Especially since manufacturers have historically changed the battery interface substantially every few years, forcing people to upgrade their equipment. Maybe that's changing, though, it does seem like the latest iteration of DeWalt batteries have been around considerably longer than the previous generation was.

I've bought three of them -- I'm actually using DeWalt because of that. But the batteries all arrived and refused to charge. I probed them with a multimeter, and found the cell voltage was quite low. Hooking it up to a constant current lab supply for ~30 minutes raised the cell voltage enough to get the charger to accept it... but I've only had one run with them. I hope they'll work again.

I'm a heavy DeWalt user and I'm already a little salty sometimes about how much they charge for their batteries. If they change up the standard again so I need adapters or new tools, I'm going to switch manufacturers altogether. So far I like their stuff well enough, thankfully I haven't run into any problems with new batteries not working out of the box yet. Knock on wood

It's like... a handful of 18650 batteries and a metal tab. Legitimately, we should be able to make our own with a 3D printer and Amazon.

They really are - at least for Milwaukee almost all the smarts are in the tool itself and not in the pack.

But never buy a pack - always wait for a sale or deal and get the batteries free with tool (or tool free with batteries).

> always wait for a sale or deal and get the batteries free with tool

I agree. I don't think I've ever paid full price buying a battery by itself. I just can't stomach the terrible value. I watch for a sale and pick up a new tool with the battery I want. I've got a few relatively obscure tools that way that I'd probably not bother purchasing otherwise.

It's price segmentation - they know that a contractor/employee who needs a battery ASAP will pay sticker price, whereas homeowners will wait for a sale.

All the modern batteries show that when super low - often if they’ve been really discharged or in the cold.

Leaving them on the charger or letting them “rest” for a day or two can also bring them back.

I will buy into electric everything once the government mandates standardized interchangeable batteries for everything. And mandatory warranties.

Plug-in gardening equiment also exists, along with extension cords that should work with a yard of that size.

My grandmother's townhouse had a 6 x 8' strip of grass to mow, and had a plug in mower. It worked great.

I'm all for picking the tools that work best for your situation. But don't say, "And I hereby decree that everyone will now use this technology."

For something that small even a simple push unpowered mower would work.

But they didn't decree that "everybody will now use this technology". They just outlawed something harmful. You're quite free to hire a goat, use a rake, plenty of options.

I think this is actually the system working. The benefits of a tiny proportion of the population (lawn care companies) don’t outweigh everyone else. As a whole, the people decided that clean air and less noise pollution warranted a change. Maybe it will cost more in the near term to achieve those goals. But, it’s a level playing field. The costs will not be borne by the lawn care companies but by society at large. If the price of providing lawn care truly goes up then all lawn care providers will charge more. Society at large was already paying the costs of air / noise pollution.

Heh replace “lawn care companies” with “immigrants” and it reads much different.

I've used extension cord based equipment in several countries (places with large lawns and places with small lawns). You do have to keep track of the cord at all times (lest you mow the cord in two) , but it's not a huge bother.

Just because something is better (by various metrics) doesn't mean it will have "won the market". That's never been how things have worked, "the market" is far from perfect.

> if that was truly the case, then wouldn't battery powered equipment have won the market already?

That's always the risk of arguing that it's in people's interests to already be doing something!

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