Thanks for your feedback. I too wish that Honda could have continued to make gas engine mowers alongside new battery-powered offerings so customers who prefer one platform over the other could have a choice.
But to put the battery cost issue into perspective, I think you can squeeze 10 years out of a pack with quality cells by simply following good protocols for heat management and state of charge. Where I live in the deep south along the gulf coast, we mow 40 times per year. If I depreciate a $400 pack down to zero over 400 mowings, the pack itself costs me about $1 per mow. The recharge cost is pennies per mow. I only use ethanol-free fuel in my Honda gas mower, which costs close to $5 per gallon and uses maybe 0.2 gallons per mow. So the fuel cost per mow of my gas Honda is similar to the pack depreciation cost per mow of my battery Honda. Even if pack depreciation were 2X the fuel cost of my gas mower, we're still talking about trivially small dollar amounts per year, in exchange for less noise (no hearing protection needed), no fumes to inhale and lower vibration for my tennis elbow to deal with. That's not a bad tradeoff for a few dollars per year.
And BTW, I bought my battery Honda for $400 ($499 sale price, minus another $100 from Northern Tool). That included the mower, charger and battery. At that package price, the battery was basically free. $400 is less than I paid for my HRN216 gas Honda six years ago. It's good to buy these things on end-of-season sales.
