Is electric the way to go now?

[smhardesty]

You guys did a fantastic job of side stepping his questions and airing your thoughts on politics. I will answer as best I can from a consumer's side as I do repairs, but not as a repair facility. The electrics offer a lot to the consumer. No gas, no oil, very quiet and light weight and virtually no maintenance other than keeping it charged and clean. I have repaired a couple and it's normal things like tires, safety switches, blades, etc. The down side is the batteries will wear out, or you'll desire a second one to allow more cutting time. As said, they are costly to purchase afterwards, but I would imagine most will purchase off line unless it's needed quickly.
One other thought, for users that are used to washing the deck underside, you can't do that with the wlk behinds, it burns out the motors. If I were a shop, I would stock everyday things like blades and a few batteries. You would have to research which machines are the most common.

You mean you can't do that to battery powered walk behinds. And that is true. You also best not run the thing over a puddle of water while mowing. It will fry the motor sure enough. I flip the decks of ICE push mowers and turn the pressure washer on them. They are nearly as clean underneath as on top when I get done with them. I can't confirm it, but I read on another forum where a guy was using a Kobalt push mower to mow his grass shortly after a light rain shower. Supposedly the wet grass caused the motor to fry. Now, we all know we should NOT mow wet grass. Since I have moved into town I have been blown away by the number of neighbors and commercial mowers that will mow within 15 minutes of a rain shower. I sit and watch them do it, then look at the mess of clumpy, wet grass they leave behind. It doesn't seem to bother any of them. I can't tolerate my yard looking like that.

 

[smhardesty]

Repair - other than battery power the mower was just a rotary blade running on a shaft and bearing. My guess is that a phone AP will be available to trouble shoot any electrical issues.

I think that might be the most honest and correct statement in this whole thread so far. I don't do electrical. I was in computer work for 30+ years. Friends, neighbors, family can't understand why I won't work on anything electrical. I'll bet I have said this a few thousand times, electronic and electrical are NOT the same thing. We have a couple of local shops that rewind electric motors. I figured those shops are the ones that can make money repairing battery powered OPE. Maybe I'm all wet.

 

[adam1991]

As of now, it's not the best idea or most convenient for most people to go with battery powered equipment.
There are several reasons for this but most of it boils down to the battery technology, capacity, and lifespan just isn't there and it's not where it should be especially for 2023.
To be honest with you there's not a whole lot of difference in the battery technology for this type of equipment and for things like cordless drills etc then there was in the late 80s and early nineties.
Some people may disagree but...they are wrong. Lol
You could take a high quality Milwaukee or Makita drill from back then and compare it to your new latest and greatest lithium ion drill and about the only difference will be size and weight which for most people is not really a concern.
Some of the new ones are built and designed so weirdly that they won't even stand up on the their base upright like the old ones have done for decades.
The high qualities would drive hundreds of screws into deck wood or two before is ETC and had plenty of power and many of those are still being used today even though they're on there multiple sets of replacement batteries whereas the new ones end up having stripped out clutches and gears inside etc.
So they really haven't improved much and especially not where battery technology needs to be for 2023.
Hey, that's a rhyme.
The problem with battery is most people can't actually cut their lawn on One battery or one charge.
I guess it depends on where most of these people live because with smaller lots then sure you can pull it off but in a lot of areas around this country where lots are well over 1/3 acre and even at a half an acre you just can't do it unless you're simply walking the mower around the land and not really cutting grass.
The marketing is very deceptive and so is the specifications for these mowers. When they say cuts up to 1.2 acres or whatever it says or it says 20 minutes run time or 45 minutes run time, the problem is this is sometimes with the self-propelled feature off on a walk behind mower and it is always under ideal conditions of flat ground and barely trimming like under an inch off of the grass and certainly with grass that barely looks like it needs to be cut.
If you use one of these mowers for an overgrown lawn like many people have done with gasoline mowers where they only cut it every 10 to 20 days then you won't get over 15 minutes or so from one of these mowers and it will also look terrible because they bog down so much and don't even have much inertia from there wimpy light blades.
Now, some of the traditional gasoline more manufacturers are starting to build a more that looks just like their standard mowers and has a very similar if not the same blade and all they have done is put an electric motor in place of the gasoline engine and that's an improvement versus these narrower plastic battery powered mowers with a very thin light duty and lightweight blade.
Now the big problem previously was that the battery riders were extremely overpriced! But now they're solving that problem because they're just raising the prices on the gasoline ones to exorbitant crazy levels!
I predicted this last year and I'm seeing it come true. The Cub cadet 42 inch mower at Home Depot I believe was 4,400 but it was some crazy amount whereas the gasoline one earlier that season and the end of the season before was 1588 or 1799 depending on engines and stuff like that.
So now these gasoline mowers which are the exact same mower for all intents and purposes they were the year before with some of them being the exact same mowers that were just rolled in in September and then rolled back out in March are now $3,000 or something like that and it's ridiculous.
Early on you were paying a premium to be a pioneer for a battery mower as they were five and six hundred dollars when the gasoline option was 249 to 349.
Then all of a sudden a season or two ago I saw them flip those prices and they had lowered the price of the battery mowers and raise the prices of the gasoline so all these manufacturers are going to do is messing around different ways and use one to subsidize the other and eventually the prices will meet probably in the middle or the industry will be so against gasoline that they will charge an actual premium on those which is obviously just a penalty premium to deter sales of them and just steer people in the direction of battery mowers.
It just blows back to the problem now that whether you love them or hate them because there are some pluses and minuses of each, the problem is for most people a battery powered mower and battery battery powered equipment is too much of a sacrifice.
You sacrifice too much use time and too much power.
Then top it off with the battery life span is not very good and the replacement battery prices are quite amazingly High currently
But the air conditioning us to expect to put big money into everything or a large percentage of the price because it's not like you can buy a lawn mower today and that engine is going to last 20 plus years like the old ones. You're lucky to get 8 or 10 years out of these new ones with their stupid plastic camshaft and stuff like that and they want you to have to buy a new one or put $250 into repair on a $450 lawn mower which is absurd.
So it doesn't make it sound so bad to spend $149 for One battery and 199 for the more capacity one. I was literally at Menards last week and they had three batteries available for their line of outdoor power equipment . They all three were overpriced but the highest amp hour capacity was 199.
$200 for a battery for anything is a rip-off but especially something that's probably only going to get you two to three years at best and the capacity won't be very good the last third of that lifespan.
As we go further into the future and they continue to contaminate and use up lithium and stuff like that I'm sure they'll be price premiums and penalties involved in these prices and batteries could be even more expensive..
It's simply a solution for a non problem!
It's fine to have little cheap ones like blowers and string trimmers for people who like the events of just sticking the battery on and going out and doing a quick trim or blow but if you need something for over 12 to 15 minutes you're pretty much out of luck and then you're switching batteries and all of that.
But it's nice not to have to pull the rope and start one because they never got smart enough to make them easier to start despite three different attempts I can think of none of which panned out very well.
Unfortunately those of us who like the one and done theory of buying something good quality and never having to buy another one is probably a thing of the past but the problem is they haven't lowered the price to make up for it so at the end of 30 or 40 years you still spent the same amount per year of ownership.
Most people in this world and most entities actually want us to spend more money and they want it to be more expensive to live even if you are lucky enough to get more money, have more money, earn more money etc. They don't care even if they give it to you, they just want you to spend more because more is always better in their eyes.

Wrong.

 

[smhardesty]

Please Google "Willow Project" and then get back to us on this topic. Or don't. Learning new things is up to all of us individually.

I'm fully aware of what is going on in Alaska. My comments were specific to the 48 contiguous stares and off shore drilling. Where is the new exploration and the additional drilling and pumping of crude in those areas? You can NOT deny that Biden halted exploration and new drilling in the areas I'm referring to. Then, just take a look at the potential production from under the Dakotas, Iowa, and millions of acres of ocean areas. He stopped all of that. Then, turned around and increased the importation of FOREIGN crude. The bottom line is that we are now paying $4.00 a gallon for gasoline when we were only paying $1.90 a few years earlier. THAT is my point. How is it in the best interest of the United States to reduce production of oil in our own backyard, then pay higher prices for crude from foreign countries? I'm no economics major, but I see a pretty obvious problem with that line of thinking.

 

[smhardesty]

You should have stayed with this line. I was reading these posts out loud to my wife and started with your premise of trying to learn new things. She said "good for that guy, he wants to learn and look to the future". But then after some of the negative (and kind of ignorant if we're being honest) comments, you seem to have caved to the idiocy of anti-technology people who think that ICE tech has been around for a thousand years, and also don't seem to grasp the idea that shoving our planet full of carbon discharge might not be a growth option for our species. Bravo to the first version of you, boo to the second. Come back to the light side!

I will ignore your attempts to provoke me into an argument you are obviously not equipped to handle. My advice would be that if you managed to get the info you needed to fix your carb, you should probably just leave the forum. You are the only person to make any attack on any other member of this forum The rest of us were exchanging ideas and we were all learning from what the others said. Nothing positive can result from your attempt to provoke me, or any other member of this forum, into an argument. Yes, I see you are new. I also see an individual making a complete ass of himself. If you think you are capable of actually CONTRIBUTING to a discussion, feel free. Otherwise, why not just clam up and learn something from the rest of us?

 

[smhardesty]

Well Sir, in the country I live in EVERTHING of this nature is made in China. ...By American Companies! (Time that was addressed, I feel)
And most of it is single-use or fails after a few months and getting service, whether under guarantee or not, is time consuming/frustrating....it invariably involves a waiting period of at least a month whilst "they investigate"...only to issue a credit note and they bin the defective battery tool. (Yet more pollution.)

A lot of my criticism stems from the fact that the mining of Lithium, particularly in Africa is akin to slavery....Yet the BLM and the wokists are very quiet on the subject.
Good short video on YT regarding this disgusting state of affairs.

Then, as others have mentioned: There is the disposal problem. There is already a plague of wind turbine blades that cannot (at least, if profit is the key factor) be recycled.
Then there is the safety aspect: Electric cars are much heavier as a result of their batteries, but the cars themselves are lighter in order to extend range, the net result being the car is a death trap in a shunt.....and that's before you take into consideration the increased fire hazard: A Lithium battery fire cannot be extinguished by current car-carried extinguishers.
Even the responding firefighters will struggle bring the fire under control.
I have seen demonstrations where such burning vehicles were submerged in a tank of water: When removed days later: The fire reignited itself!

If all this seems to be the attitude of a Luddite.... I will conclude with the following:
This Headless Chicken Dash into "Clean Electric" will take decades to safely achieve and at massive cost, not just to the consumer, but also to the planet.
Also: Remember this: Every month, of every year, at least one new Coal Fired Electricity Station is opened in either China or India. Yet we are urged to "Save The Planet".
It's a crock of.......................

Very well stated. The one thing that most guys refuse to include in the argument of EVs being just like the Model T is how they were presented to the public. What is left out of the argument is that no one, government or otherwise, FORCED any person to buy a Model T with an ICE. The EVs are going to be forced upon us by government agencies. That makes a whole lot of difference in how the two were introduced to the consumer. They threat of completely outlawing and banning ICEs of any kind is too strong armed for most to accept. Sure, EVs may very well be the way of the future. If so, develop them completely, offer them to the public at reasonable prices, and then see what the CONSUMER decides. Maybe in the time the consumer is deciding, an alternative may arise, like Hydrogen cell vehicles. Maybe some person or organization will develop an even better solution. Government strong arming is never a good thing.

 

[smhardesty]

I think the consumer will be in for a shock when he see's how much good electric stuff costs...and how much to repair... oh It needs a battery pack ? something simple and when they see the price...they go back to gas ...they get another electric and try again....call somebody to cut the lawn...let it grow or get a couple of goats, no goats? how bout a flock of sheep noe you are probably thinking Astro turf? or just catus and rocks..It's kind of like color TV's when was the last time you saw one of those fixed....they just get a bigger BETTER more expensive one....and charge it!....oh that's for Electric mowers...they chrage them x two!...

You got it right! As a person that spent 30+ years in the computing industry, I saw this "disposable item" crap first hand. When PCs were first offered to the public, I could build a better computer and for less money than one that one of the big manufacturers produced. Then, a few years later, I could no longer provide one that cost less. I could still build a better one, but because the big companies started controlling the prices of components, I could no longer compete price wise. At that point, I was just repairing PCs that the big companies produced. A VERY few years later it had reached the point that if the computer I was working on was more than a couple of years old, I would just tell the customer to throw it away and go buy whatever Walmart had on the shelf. We had reached the "disposable item" era of the personal computer Now, smart phones are the same way.

 

[smhardesty]

If you use one of these mowers for an overgrown lawn like many people have done with gasoline mowers where they only cut it every 10 to 20 days then you won't get over 15 minutes or so from one of these mowers and it will also look terrible because they bog down so much and don't even have much inertia from there wimpy light blades.

Now, that is something I had a discussion with a guy here in town about. He went all battery powered with his stuff a couple of years ago. He openly admitted that he regularly lets his lawn get too high. He said if the grass is more than about 3.5" to 4" tall, his two batteries won't mow his whole lawn. He has a typical city lot just like me. It takes me 35 minutes to mow my lawn with my lawn tractor. He said when he was using a gas push mower it would take him between 45 minutes to an hour to mow, depending on just how tall the grass was. Now, he uses the two batteries, then waits a few hours while they charge up, then finishes the lawn. He admitted that if he mowed when he should, the two batteries do last long enough to finish the mowing. Maybe they will finally figure out how to manufacturer a battery with enough juice to cut 4" or 5" tall grass and also develop batteries that will last much longer so you only need one battery.

 

[smhardesty]

If you use one of these mowers for an overgrown lawn like many people have done with gasoline mowers where they only cut it every 10 to 20 days then you won't get over 15 minutes or so from one of these mowers and it will also look terrible because they bog down so much and don't even have much inertia from there wimpy light blades.

Now, that is something I had a discussion with a guy here in town about. He went all battery powered with his stuff a couple of years ago. He openly admitted that he regularly lets his lawn get too high. He said if the grass is more than about 3.5" to 4" tall, his two batteries won't mow his whole lawn. He has a typical city lot just like me. It takes me 35 minutes to mow my lawn with my lawn tractor. He said when he was using a gas push mower it would take him between 45 minutes to an hour to mow, depending on just how tall the grass was. Now, he uses the two batteries, then waits a few hours while they charge up, then finishes the lawn. He admitted that if he mowed when he should, the two batteries do last long enough to finish the mowing. Maybe they will finally figure out how to manufacturer a battery with enough juice to cut 4" or 5" tall grass and also develop batteries that will last much longer so you only need one battery.

 

[smhardesty]

I've been working on EGO equipment for a couple years now along with some Toro battery powered stuff. My forte is gas engines but I knew I had to learn battery powered equipment because no matter what my personal feelings are about battery powered equipment, they are here to stay and you will have to contend with them to remain profitable. However, there is no way in the world that battery powered equipment can replace all gas powered equipment so there will always be a need for old school mechanics. That being said, my personal feelings will prevent me from ever buying a battery powered lawnmower or snow blower. I have discovered something about battery powered lawn mowers and snow blowers that will blow your mind. They have an inherent problem that cannot be overcome. If you stop the blade of a mower or the auger of a snow blower while they are in motion, an over current event will happen that will blow right past the fuses and fry a circuit board and there is nothing that can be done to prevent it from happening. Nonetheless, training for the future is a must. You could contact companies such as MEDART or Power Distributors and see if they are currently hosting any workshops on battery powered equipment. STIHL provides training for people that are already employed by a STIHL distributor. Maybe they could provide you with some insight regarding training. There are other resources available. I will make another post a little later today with some additional information.

I've been doing as much research into repairing battery powered equipment and I think I'm just going to stick with repairing ICE OPE. The biggest reason is that I'm not trying to open and run a shop that does LOTS of repairs and I don't have any intent of doing this type of thing for years and years to come. My original question was whether there were places to get the training to do the repairs and if it would be worth my time and money to learn. From everything that has been said, I think that might be something that just isn't right for me. I think the biggest reason I'd stay away from learning is that, for the most part, real repairs to these devices would amount to repairing the electric motor, which most electric repair shops can already do. The other reason is that, again for the most part, the OPE that is on the market today is disposable. Yes, there are a few companies producing battery powered OPE that will last 10 years, give or take, but the rest of the stuff, which is probably bought by the customers I'd get, is the cheap, throw away equipment. I think I'll just stick to the old fossil fuel, smoking and belching, dinosaurs.