Electric Lawnmowers

[Skotty]

Thanks for the thorough review @ Skotty
Let us know how it holds up especially claimed battery performance.

I'll provide more updates in a few months after the grass starts growing and I can actually do some real mowing.

Note again however that I ordered the ex model with a slightly bigger battery than the e model. Home Depot shows the e model at their stores.

There were a couple of other reviews I saw that complained about it being hard to unpack. I had no difficulty unpacking it. Some quick thoughts on that though. It comes in a metal frame that I guess they use to stack them, and under that is a pallet. The instructions, if you read them, say that if you don't have a ramp, to take if off the back and not the front, as going forwards can damage the deck. In addition to straps holding the mower to the metal packing frame, there were two strange metal bars that were sticking up in kind of an odd way near the front tires that could have caught when trying to offload the tractor. I was able to bend them down a bit with my foot before moving the tractor to make sure they were out of the way. And finally, the metal packing frame has corner posts that as far as I could tell could not be removed, and the deck was just a hair too wide to slip past the bars. However, a hacksaw made short work of one of the rear posts, after which I could offload it.

 

[muleferg]

Former Brushy Mt Bee Farm owner

show's his new model X to my old model S owner.

 

[JRP3]

Lawnmower?

 

[nwdiver]

Lawnmower?

Possibly...

 

[Skotty]

UPDATE! I've now mowed once with my Ryobi RM480ex electric riding mower.

Overall, it's great. Thumbs up.

However, there is one issue that is not ideal.

Each blade is powered by it's own independent electric motor. This means you can bog down one and the other motors can't do anything about it. If you bog it down enough, the mower blade will come to a stop. When did I discover this can happen? When you are using the mulching plug, and running over thick grass (doesn't have to be overgrown, just healthy thick).

This is just anecdotal so far, as I need to do more testing, but it seems the blade on the chute side (which is plugged when set up for mulching) bogs down more easily than the non-chute side. Is the deck design causing grass to want to flow towards the chute side even with the plug in place? It certainly seems so, but again, I don't have enough data yet.

If this holds true, the workaround is to always mow with chute side facing the cut grass. Generally, you always have a little overlap, and the cut grass side doesn't have to work as hard. So this can help balance the load between the two sides.

Ideally, Ryobi should just install more powerful blade motors, or perhaps use a belt or gear system to either link them to share the workload or replace them with a single more powerful motor.

 

[strider]

Thanks for the update. The Mean Green Nemesis has 3 LEDs between your feet that tell you the blade speed. The lights change from Green to Yellow to Red if you are bogging one (or all) of the blades.

Mowers with a chute will have all blades turning in the same direction to push the clippings out of the chute. When you plug the chute that blade closest to the chute has to work the hardest. Mean Green has a completely different mulching deck for their commercial mowers where the blades spin in different directions and the mulch drops out the back of the deck. I wanted one but it wasn't available on the Nemesis when I ordered it last year though.

 

[swaltner]

I really wish the Hustler Zeon that I had originally purchased had worked out. I swapped it with a gas one because the Zeon with lead acid batteries just didn’t have the required run time for my 1.25 acre lawn. Really makes it hit home when I take the gas powered Hustler Fastrak in for service. Not repair, service. They said to expect a $525 invoice. Crazy! While they suggest $450/year in service, I don’t do this very often, usually handling it myself. The Zeon was just “add water to the batteries” for the maintenance plan.

Maybe in a few years I can find a used Mean Green mower and get rid of the gasser...

 

[Evoforce]

I really wish the Hustler Zeon that I had originally purchased had worked out. I swapped it with a gas one because the Zeon with lead acid batteries just didn’t have the required run time for my 1.25 acre lawn. Really makes it hit home when I take the gas powered Hustler Fastrak in for service. Not repair, service. They said to expect a $525 invoice. Crazy! While they suggest $450/year in service, I don’t do this very often, usually handling it myself. The Zeon was just “add water to the batteries” for the maintenance plan.

Maybe in a few years I can find a used Mean Green mower and get rid of the gasser...

I converted my lead mowers to lithium. Plug in a 2nd lithium battery if/after running one down. Quick charger charges 1st battery in 15 minutes so unlimited range if needed. All of the rest of the yard tools are lithium too! Never looked back...

 

[Skotty]

BTW, I'm so far pretty impressed with the battery on the Ryobi RM480ex. I mowed about half my lawn the other day and the charge indicator didn't lose a single bar. Maybe I didn't need the ex, probably could have just bought the e.

Not sure what my lawn size is. Good size suburban. Maybe half acre?

 

[mikevbf]

BTW Electrek came out with a 2 part article on electric lawn care options:
Cut gas while you cut grass: your guide to electric lawn mowers
Electric Lawn Tools Part 2: Going green on your lawn and garden

 

[ilovemycoffee]

For those with more modest lawns, I recommend this Power+ 21" Self-Propelled Lawn Mower

I have enjoyed using this mower this season. I have about a 1/4 to 1/2 acre, flat lawn. It mulches and cuts as well as my old gas mower. I didn’t realize how much exhaust the gas mowers put out until I switches. It’s also quiet, like a large fan. My wife can’t hear the mower inside the house.

I also got the Ego string trimmer which uses the same Lithium battery pack. Much more easier to use than my old gas trimmer.

 

[strider]

BTW Electrek came out with a 2 part article on electric lawn care options:
Cut gas while you cut grass: your guide to electric lawn mowers
Electric Lawn Tools Part 2: Going green on your lawn and garden

Wow, epic fail not including the Mean Green in that article.

 

[gavine]

They said to expect a $525 invoice. Crazy! While they suggest $450/year in service

That's about what I spend per year for my lawn service to mow, edge, weedwhack and clean-up.

 

[hcsharp]

For those with more modest lawns, I recommend this Power+ 21" Self-Propelled Lawn Mower

I have enjoyed using this mower this season. I have about a 1/4 to 1/2 acre, flat lawn. It mulches and cuts as well as my old gas mower. I didn’t realize how much exhaust the gas mowers put out until I switches. It’s also quiet, like a large fan. My wife can’t hear the mower inside the house.

I also got the Ego string trimmer which uses the same Lithium battery pack. Much more easier to use than my old gas trimmer.

I have the same combination of mower and trimmer and like both of them. Last year I got the 16" chainsaw that uses the same battery. It's not designed as well as the mower and trimmer but it's still pretty good.

 

[Kandiru]

The RYOBI is another step in the right direction, after the Cub Cadet. The tube frame will likely be a lot more durable than the current crop of xxxxters with millimetric steel frames that bend and last one year from Sears and many others.

My good old faithful Kubota G2460G 60" deck refuses to die, now 20yo, pushes snow and sand too with the 1/4" steel frame.

That said if I were in the market now I would get the bigger Ryobi along with a Snow Joe lithium snow blower.

I hope to get a lithium beast to push snow and mow 2 acres cca. 2030

 

[Kandiru]

I'd like to get a Mean Green, but those are around $10K, and that's pretty extreme. I might be willing to pony up the dough for it, but I don't think I can get the green light from my wife on that one. However, $2500 for the Ryobi should pass full committee approval. :-D

I don't think the automated ones would work too well for me. I've got trees, sticks, walnuts, hedge apples, a fenced yard with areas inside and outside the fence that need to be mowed, children who leave toys out in the yard occasionally, sprinkler heads to be careful around, lots of things for a mower bot to choke on.

The Mean Green are also niche, look like something grandpa fabricated on the weekend, and you will have a terrible time shipping if something goes wrong.

 

[nwdiver]

If you're gonna get a self-propelled electric lawn mower... might as well get one with FSD

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

If you're gonna get a self-propelled electric lawn mower... might as well get one with FSD

I picked up the cheapest version of those a month or so ago.

It took me the entire weekend to prep my lawn for it. Most of the time was spent expanding, and seeding additional areas where I wanted grass.

Once I got it all set up it worked pretty well.

It's amusingly dumb as it just randomly bounces from one boundary wire to the next. I'm still in the phase of determining how many hours to set it to mow per day to get good coverage. Right now I have it set at 10.

I don't have dogs, and I have a fenced in back yard so it pretty perfect for me. I also hate loud lawn mowers and this one is really quiet.

 

[ejp001]

I use the EGO Power 21" mower and it works very well for my needs, although I have a fairly small yard

 

[strider]

The Mean Green are also niche, look like something grandpa fabricated on the weekend, and you will have a terrible time shipping if something goes wrong.

What are you talking about? Have you actually used one? I'm on my second season with my Mean Green and it is a fantastic machine. I have a full 2 acres of grass to mow (not a 2-acre lot) including a roadside ditch and it handles it. The blades are beat to crap as I have a gravel driveway, tons of trees (I'm too lazy to pick up sticks before mowing), and when mowing the ditch sometimes I bury a blade into the side of the street or into dirt but aside from a huge racket when I do that the machine works great. In fact I think the system with independent motors really helps in those situations as there's less rotating mass if you hit something hard.

I don't see how the Mean Green is any more niche than a Tesla. As I said I have a ton of trees and therefore really benefit from a ZTR. My ICE mower was a tractor style and mowing around the trees was a painful, multi-step process. It's effortless with the Mean Green.

I agree that shipping the entire unit would be a problem but nothing has gone wrong so far (which is more than I can say about my Teslas). If something did go wrong I would hope that I could work w/ them to diagnose over the phone and then they would ship just the parts I would need. When you look under the seat it's a very simple machine - shouldn't be difficult to swap out modules if something did go wrong. Prior to the sale they were very responsive and answered all of my questions.