Might we Americans see more electric-powered lawn mowers in the near future?
As more battery-powered home improvement products make their way to market, John Deere’s mass channel business manager Sean Sundberg predicted in a recent interview with Fox News Digital that battery-powered riding lawn mowers, specifically, could be getting some serious attention.
“It’s a great trend,” he said, sharing his opinion. “We’ll see the adoption curve rapidly escalate … It’s simplicity of use with the machine.”
For the average consumer who may be mowing half an acre of grass, Sundberg said he’s optimistic the machine will be reliable.
“I don’t think there will be any durability issues,” he said.
“You plug it in, you go take care of your business … just like you normally would with a fuel-option machine. So it’ll be very similar in operation and I think the performance will be there as well.”
For larger property owners, having the right machine and trusting that it can get the job done is important, which all comes down to finding the right battery with enough power.
There’s already been a greater transition in the home improvement space to battery-powered machines, including walk-behind mowers and hand-held tools.
“[We’ve] definitely seen an adoption rate increasing rapidly in the consumer space,” Sundberg said. “Because it is super easy.”
A handful of brands such as EGO, Skil and Kobalt have released electric products like leaf blowers, weed whackers and power saws.
The John Deere expert said the increased interest in battery-powered tools is due to its simplicity, since there’s no messing around with fuel — saving today’s consumer a few extra bucks at the pump.
Sundberg hinted that even though John Deere does not currently have any battery-powered tools on the market, there may be a few models coming down the road.
“We do not have a battery-powered machine in market … yet,” he said.
Worth keeping in mind, to be sure: While some major cities are already seeing their lights go off due to electricity use overload, grid operators and energy advocates gave warning to states that are closing their coal-fired power plants even quicker than they can build new ones, FOX Business has reported.
“Any plans to remove nuclear plants or coal power plants or natural gas plants that are slated to be closed, that has to be completely suspended,” Power the Future executive director Daniel Turner told FOX Business’ Jeff Flock on Tuesday.
Eighty coal-fired power plants are slated to close across 14 states in the next six years, Flock mentioned in his report — posing a threat, as some blackouts have already begun and coal and nuclear power still source 41 percent of the country’s electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Kristen Altus of FOX Business contributed to this report.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
