> There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them.
That’s an awfully uncharitable projection.
The lawn business people I know would love to adopt full electric fleets of gear. They aren’t sending their teams out with gas engines because it’s a “fantasy escape world”. They do it because gas engines are currently the only reasonable way to keep the crews running all day without spending thousands of dollars on batteries over and over again.
Current battery tech is hit or miss. The packs should be protected from over-discharge and last for hundreds of cycles, but in practice they got a lot of early failures. They also need extra packs to rotate while others are charging. At $100-200 per battery, they might be spending $1000 on batteries to operate a machine for a season, which would have bought them two gas powered machines and gas to operate them.
There’s also the issue of charging throughout the day. Getting a reliable charging setup that works on a truck inverter and getting crews to perfectly manage batteries throughout the day, including spares, is significantly harder than just filling up a gas tank.
Projecting all of this on to “fantasy escape world” is silly.
You are talking about people working in a business.
I'm talking about neighbors living in rural/suburban areas.
EDIT: We have a lawn care guy. He does our half acre in under 30 minutes. Our neighbors who do it themselves - same half acre size - typically take 90-120 minutes. They'll just sit on a riding mower and let it idle for minutes, while looking up stuff on their phones. Or let it idle and go inside for a drink, while leaving it running. They enjoy riding around with a loud engine underneath, like a really slow motorcycle. This is not speculation, it's from talking to them.
The business people have an incentive to get in and out quickly - they can do more lawns that way.
The people who like loud engine noise have no such incentive. They have an incentive to have a lazy afternoon of lawn mowing.
There’s some overlap as well–I recently had an extended visit in my rural hometown, working by a window overlooking the main street. Something I noticed quickly was that a huge proportion of passing vehicles that happened to be loud enough for me to glance up were actually lawn service pickup trucks with loud, modified exhausts. It also became clear that I’ve been living in the city too long to remember how obnoxious the all-day-every-day drone of lawn equipment is, it sort of blew my mind.
People letting an engine run, just because, they have such a weird quirk of the mind. It's bizarrely common.
It's not just out of spite, although for some for sure it may be part of it. It seems out of a weird affection for things that are noisy, under their dominion.
Not the OP but I would agree with you if I was not told explicitly by several people that they love being outside with loud gas powered engines. These people happen to be my neighbors. There's a culture around small gas powered engines. People grew up with them, and learned engine repair on them, which helped them build a career. I have used battery powered leaf blower and a battery powered weed eater, and I have been told "that's nicer than anything else I've ever used, but I just love gas engines".
>Projecting all of this on to “fantasy escape world” is silly.
I kind of agree. How I see is that there's a lot of frustration in people in general, and many manage their internal turmoil by manifesting it into external stimulus. Many behave actively, organizedly anti-social ways, so much so that new words, Wikipedia articles have been created to describe the behavior, like "Rolling coal" or "Whistle tips".
Now, I think that these can be thought of as tips of an iceberg. The iceberg being unhandled emotional stress, a system that perpetually creates it, and the behaviors of people that handle it.
I agree that the business incentives are there to keep ICE around. ICE is mature technology, battery-powered are not, and since batteries have not coalesced or aren't regulated around a handful of standards, manufacturers use this to lock in customers into their own ecosystem, among other kinds of power struggles being present as well. I'm personally not confident that I can buy a replacement battery for a new device in 5 years for a fair price, as I expect that there is going to be a new battery standard, with which my "old" device will not be compatible with. So ICE makes a lot of sense still.
On another level, I think it's important to note that noise is power. It affects us on ancient, animalistic level. Loud noise means us danger, or at the very minimum something important to pay attention to. A low level of constant noise feels like safety. No noise is creepy, we better watch out. To be able to make a huge noise is powerful - people and animals usually have gestures explicitly for this reason, and it has been used in warfare too, both in the distant and close past.
So, people are sensitive to this power. Combined with the ability of increased mobility, or the safety that a metal chassis provides, it makes it an attractive way for people to feel like they are in power, or to reduce the powerlessness they feel in other parts of their life.
I just bought a battery powered lead blower from Costco. It's my first one and it's awesome! I use it all the time for things I didn't think I would.
However, it is still very loud and doesn't last long enough for commercial use.
One instance recently, had a few very aggressive wasps in the garage (Son is allergic). In the past I'd use some chemicals, the leaf blower got them out in seconds, it's so powerful it blew them outside far enough they couldn't get back and just flew off.
Inspirational words, but I'm not giving up my power drill. Long ago my family had a brace and bit, but it's long gone, and would be awkward to use where I use the drill.
I'm a bit frightened to ask what surprising use cases you found for a lead blower.
On a more constructive note, I don't know where people get the idea that battery powered means quiet. My vacuum is electric and far from quiet – why would a leaf blower be?
It just is. You don't need a theoretical explanation, just go turn on a gas leaf blower and a battery operated one and see for yourself. The internal cumbustion engine is much louder than the actual blower mechanism.
We need LiFePO4 packs, we need them at a +200% markup ($300/kwh) rather than a +900% markup ($1000/kwh), and we need them mounted in a frame based on good backpacking backpacks with a wire running along your arm to the tool.
It's neither uncharitable nor a projection. My dad is one of these - the loudness is entirely the point, by his own admission. He told me this. He intentionally buys the loudest most powerful/obnoxious tools he can rather than the most practical and dicks around with them.
My dad is also the laziest man on the planet and does ZERO housework. He only does lawn work because it's an opportunity for him to play with his toys.
>The lawn business people I know
Nobody's talking about people with lawn businesses. Businesses will want to just get the work done and move onto the next client.
I have been running the best of the best in tools and battery tech: Milwaukee.
The blower and weed trimmer (especially) burn through very expensive batteries (XC8.0) very quickly. It is not a feasible replacement for even a moderate job. My yard is super small and I move quick and have learned to pull the batteries at 50% to keep from ruining them. But I have burnt up at least one $200 battery that will only charge to 75% now. That happened in the first season. Otherwise, performance is good.
> I have been running the best of the best in tools and battery tech: Milwaukee.
I've found Makita to be better for my line of work at least. I love my older Milwaukee tools. My 10" chopsaw from the early 90s is a solid beast, as well as my worm drive. Newer Milwaukee is a crapshoot, I've had three dead batteries from them, none from Makita. Two burnt out super sawzalls, and a miter saw with no idea what true is.
I will say Milwaukee tools have more power to them, but my Makita ones are more reliable. Less frills, less price too.
I am biased as I do more finishing then rough work, so I have an understanding that Milwaukee is better/quicker for that, but I'll stick with Makita for battery tools. I can go two, three days on a single charge with my miter.
You're talking about an 18V battery, maybe up to 8Ah. About 144Wh.
My batteries on my blower and trimmer and lawn mower use 56V batteries, up to 12Ah. About 672Wh. The smallest battery I have for it is 280Wh.
Milwaukee might make some decent power tools, but they're still batteries designed for a drill or some other smaller handheld tool used for short stints. Companies focusing on lawn care products have much different battery packs.
When we moved into a new in city home a few years ago, I wanted to keep things quiet and electric. I bought a ryobi leaf blower and lawn mower, with four 40v 6.0ah batteries. Our lawn is neither small nor big - not sure on sq ft but it’s far from huge.
It takes me about 6-8 gull charges to complete mowing and blowing. Leaf blowing is by far the more energy intensive. During the fall I have to space out the work in order to charge. Granted my property has a lot of tree cover and therefore always has a lot of leafs and debris.
Needless to say I regret my decision.
One of the problems with the blower is that it has a standard mode that is effectively useless, barely usable for even clippings. You have to run it at “max” charge for it to be remotely effective.
Edit: I have a previous year version of the RY404170-LB backpack blower. It eats batteries like candy.
When we moved into a new home a few years ago, I wanted to keep things quiet and electric. I bought an Ego lawn mower, multi-head trimmer/edger, and blower. A 56V 8Ah and a 4Ah battery. Once again, our lawn isn't small or big, fairly average 80s suburban lot.
I pretty much never need to recharge the batteries when working. I haven't needed to do much maintenance to it at all, just sharpening the mowing blade. Even after a few years the batteries still have plenty of charge to mow, trim, edge, and blow both yards. I don't normally have enough battery to do all that and do the hedge trimmer for a while though, I'll normally go inside and cool off for 15-20min and then go back out if I need to handle that. The fast charger can get a pretty good charge in 20 minutes
For what it's worth, automowers are great. I had a Husqvarna 330X doing .75 acres and was very happy with it. I don't even know how far it got on a charge to be honest, it just charged itself so I never had to worry about it.
Those look amazing. We have a rather long and complicated and hilly lawn and due to trees. Do you think a roomier like the 330x can handle a more complicated lawn layout?
Perhaps, ours had a gazebo, vegetable garden, dozen or so trees, and a very long rectangular path we mowed for access and it managed well. We spent some time getting it clear of rocks and divots though.
> best of the best in tools and battery tech: Milwaukee.
Is Milwaukee better? I always understood Milwaukee (Red), Dewalt (Yellow), and Makita (Teal) to basically be interchangeable for most products and it just depended on who you ask and which color team they were on.
If your yard is that small, why not use devices powered by a cord? Our yard is middling, but the trimmer, with an extension cord, reaches everything that needs trimming. I confess I know nothing about leaf blowers. My wife talks about getting one, but we still use rakes.
I doubt it applies to leaf blowers unless you get one with a battery pack that mounts on your back, but battery powered snow blowers are considerably more powerful than cord powered snow blowers since a cord is limited to 1500W continuous.
Convenience is a big reason. People look at me when I use rakes in the garden. Just to save some time I ended up getting a cordless leaf blower but my wife thought she might find it fun too. The area we have to clear was never going to support the maintenance of a gas-powered blower.
Separately, I was tired of the stand up vacuums for smaller jobs so got a corded stick vacuum. It's still a bit of a hassle even though I use it frequently to avoid messes getting out of control with the kids and pets. I know that if it was cordless it would get much more proactive usage by others. The design of the corded vac could be improved to make it easier but there is little incentive to do that.
A cord is limited to the amount of power you can get from mains. When you need a lot of power a battery can deliver - for a few minutes, then you have to charge for an hour.
I took this to mean my father-in-law, but not a paid business or situation where these things are a necessity. He is a lawyer who's worked remote since 2000 only leaves home for necessities and outside hobbies, but has all kinds of equipment including a tractor and snow plow. Of course, he has a ride-on mower and enough other equipment to start a landscaping business.
this is quite a straightforward reality for many people and calling it a “fantasy escape world” and “uncharitable” is itself miserly and uncharitable, and classic HN rules-lawyering in a nutshell.
like yes people do like using loud power tools for the sake of using loud power tools, most people would consider them at least moderately fun.
That’s an awfully uncharitable projection.
The lawn business people I know would love to adopt full electric fleets of gear. They aren’t sending their teams out with gas engines because it’s a “fantasy escape world”. They do it because gas engines are currently the only reasonable way to keep the crews running all day without spending thousands of dollars on batteries over and over again.
Current battery tech is hit or miss. The packs should be protected from over-discharge and last for hundreds of cycles, but in practice they got a lot of early failures. They also need extra packs to rotate while others are charging. At $100-200 per battery, they might be spending $1000 on batteries to operate a machine for a season, which would have bought them two gas powered machines and gas to operate them.
There’s also the issue of charging throughout the day. Getting a reliable charging setup that works on a truck inverter and getting crews to perfectly manage batteries throughout the day, including spares, is significantly harder than just filling up a gas tank.
Projecting all of this on to “fantasy escape world” is silly.