this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
569 points (97.7% liked)
Mildly Interesting
17496 readers
676 users here now
This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.