Not really electric cars but on topic based on comparing Batteries and Motors verses Petrol and Engines.
I have been doing a lot of gardening at my sons place over the Christmas work shut down and it is looking better. He went to mow the grass on the 31st and the silly old petrol lawn mower wouldn’t start. A friend of his wants a free one to fix so we gave it to him that day and I splurged at a end of year sale buying an EGO lawn mower, blower and whipper snipper just before the shop closed, from the reviews of electric battery gardening equipment I read it seems EGO is one of the best. The EGO is 56 Volt battery and one review said it is the Tesla of Lawn-mowers, most are two 18V batteries to make a 36V machine . As I don’t have anything battery operated yet I thought I might as well go for the EGO.
I mowed the grass, whipper snipper along the back stairs and used the blower to clean the driveway. Everything worked well and I am very happy, the mower is just as heavy if not more that my petrol one but with handles to lift it with it is much easier to carry up the stairs to the higher grass areas. My wife was also very happy as she didn’t really hear the mower and blower from inside.
What does worry me is the cost of the batteries, the 5Ah battery for the Lawn Mower is $349 the Blower uses the same, the Whipper Snipper has the 2.5Ah at $199, I could buy 7.5Ah or 10Ah for even more but I think the batteries I got with the machines are fine for my usage. I hope they last a long time, say they only last 5 years and I replace with the same that is $900 or $180 a year. I used to fill a 25L Jerry can with 98ron petrol for about $40 and that would last about a year using the mower, whipper snipper, chain saw and the pressure washer at both here and my sons place. Using 98ron means if the fuel goes off a bit things still start even a year later, I never had issues with my garden petrol tools after I stopped using 91 petrol and switched to 98. I will keep my petrol chain saw as I don't use it that often and it is in very good condition, and the pressure washer as nothing electric come close to the PSI it has, so still have to fill the jerry can every now and then.
So based on the costs above I have worked out even if the electricity coming out of the power point to charge the batteries was free, the batteries need to last 22.5 years otherwise petrol will work out cheaper that just the cost of replacement batteries.
So am I right or am I missing something? Is the cost of lithium just too expensive to make battery machines cost effective compared to equivalent petrol machines?
Is it that petrol is cheaper in Australia than elsewhere because we only have huge taxes on it rather than extremely huge taxes like elsewhere. But everything else we buy like electric garden tools, cars etc. are a lot more expensive than elsewhere because the importers have a monopoly (and have for 200 years) and love to rip us off?
If batteries were taxed like fossil fuels would electric machinery make economic sense at all?
However it is nice to have quieter machines to use
