this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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Playing devil's advocate here (I use a battery one that's lasted almost 15 years and works fine on modern Lithium instead of NiCad - Black & Decker came with a weedwhacker too). Electric is fine as a single home consumer, but not for working crews. Modern Li batteries last pretty long for a single user doing basic tasks. (The real racket is in weedwhacker spools, they're like $10ea now. I digress.)
I live in the deep south of Texas (the muggy, humid greenish part not the desert) - it's very common to have "working crews" of lawn maintenance out and about all the time. Generally speaking they just drive a truck + trailer full of gear around and look for opportunities. More common than an ice cream truck or FedEx driver after a flood rain like we get, get a deal for $20 fast & clean.
These working crews use gas powered gear simply because electric cannot keep up with the duration and use patterns required by their team without investing in a lot of batteries ($$) and a way to recharge them on the go (generator == gasoline, maybe natural gas if lucky). I haven't looked into the CA ban from this article to find out if they've carved out an exception or not for working crews, licensed or not.
Regarding the linked Texas law - read it, it actually prohibits any local (non state, non Fed) municipality from banning any device based on it's power source. This includes.... surprise.... solar panels on your roof! There are communities who think they're "ugly" and ban solar roof panels, it's real. The law does not prohibit any ordinances or regulation therein of said energy source (for example noise laws, quiet time laws, etc.) but they cannot supersede state/federal laws. This article flippantly wants you to believe it was enacted just to preserve gas lawn blowers using lazy wordsmithing for clicks.
A landscaping crew would require more batteries and/or a method to charge on the go. Cost might be prohibitive to do that now but in time it might work out. Imagine if you have a large battery in a trailer that charges up all the small batteries between sites or solar on the roof.
Considering most landscaping work is done in the summer months maybe a move to a different Lithium chemistry that is cheaper but doesn’t like cold as much could be beneficial for pro tools.
I was being subtle in addressing this, but it's spot on - the lawn maintenance working crews in question are all folks out trying to hustle and earn a living, these are not "outfits" with disposable income to invest in the electric future. Quite often the gear is bought/sold in pawn shops all over town, tools are probably the #1 item in any given pawn shop around here (followed by the usual jewelry, guns, etc disposable income items).
Tangent: I lived in CA (SF) for ~18yrs and recognize a lot of the names of the cities and what they're generally like. "Rich", "white" (light-skinned any race/culture), "affluent" are the words that came to mind. I dare say that many of these enacted bans are based on "those brown folks making too much noise in my pretty neighborhood." $0.02
These types of companies may not have tons of disposable income to invest in this but as they need new tools it will probably phase in.
It probably depends on the batteries, battery market, and repair market. We don't really expect batteries to last a decade. The repairability of these tools is a concern.
Meanwhile, it's pretty common to repair gas tools. Sometimes from multiple broken ones. Powering the gas tools is similarly simple. None of it requires a company to continue to develop their proprietary product to run.
This is an industry and a market that has been around for decades. I suspect the limited part supply and limited repairability of the electric tools is going to limit their practical lifetime compared to the existing ones on the market.
Great point about repairability. I’ve seen some interesting videos of EV repairs on cars with odd pack issues. Very specialized work right now but assuming skills will develop over time that makes it much easier.
This isn't true anymore. Go check out greenworks commercial line.
I know a beekeeper who has a power inverter hooked up to his truck. He uses it to charge the batteries for both his power tools and bee vacuum systems. He can even use it to run regular plug-in AC devices. Lawn crews can just have the backup batteries charging while they drive from job to job.
That’s pretty sweet. More car company’s are including provisions for these types of systems built in to accommodate the changing trends too.
Why wouldn't those crews just charge their equipment from the alternator? It's additional wear and tear or the alternator, but far cheaper than a generator
Don't forget electric weedeater and mowers are not designed for constant use. My buddy and I back in the day had a mowing business in Dallas, Texas. We had gas mower but electric weedeater. We had to replace it twice because it burn up after using it constant for 3 days. Don't know why we didn't buy gas one. I remember we used electric to begin with because all we had. But later? Guess they were cheaper back then.
Probably burned up the brushes in the electric motors. Those are usually replaceable. Many tools are now available in brushless.
This was in 1999 and it was a cheap weedeater.
Man you would be surprised how much the technology has improved since 1999
Just because you bought a cheap electric weed eater doesn’t mean it was the electric that was the problem.