this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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Mildly Interesting

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We thought the rider fell off or something and it was going to crash. Then it turned and kept mowing. Park Roomba!

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[–] Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

I am not saying you're fundamentally wrong. Just that it is not yet practical in this space. That alone will greatly hamper long term adoption. Incrementalism has been shown to be the best way to create change.

Also I think your cost differential is wildly inaccurate. Just looking up power equivalent electric motors. They are roughly two to three times more expensive than the gas motor currently being offered. Along with that it is likely to now need water cooling. As for the controllers and sensors they might not need radically different but they do need to be radically more robust. A little quick math shows that a commercial grade mower would have somewhere between 800 and 1200 hours put on it in a summer. Where a consumer mower is going to get less than a hundred. To do this the components have to have much higher duty cycles, a larger margin to failure and greater R&D to make sure that components can handle the extra hours and a greater coverage of edge cases. Commercial and industrial equipment is not more expensive because it is significantly more capable it's more expensive because it is significantly more reliable. I could easily see an all electric commercial grade mower costing several thousand dollars more.

I have nothing against electrification it's probably a good solution for many things. Fundamentally though it cannot be driven by it being the right thing. Sadly that will just never work. It will happen faster and more effectively if it is driven by economics. I don't think the economics of electric commercial mowers is viable right now. I do think getting people's toes wet with advanced systems that can easily be electrified later will in the long run be more effective.