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Independantly of Saltex, I had the chance to brieifly try a couple of battery powered Pro-gear items from Oregon this week at a dealer - their handheld blower and chainsaw. Liked the look of the 4m Polesaw, but was not available to try.
Seriously impressed in the Performance Vs Price department, to extent that we are looking to get them on proper demo at a site as soon as I can arrange.
The future is taking shape in this marketplace, albeit hard to see all items being usable for a full days on-site work, but its a start and with sensible work planning I can really see the attraction.
p.s Saltex now appears a missed opportunity :(
Yes lots of battery options at Saltex. We had a good look at strimmers & blowers running from battery backpacks. Stihl and Husqavana had similar offerings in terms of quality and pricing. Greenworks 80v pro looked robust /rough & ready, but a bit cheaper, but not much news on dealers yet. Compared to others at the show, Pellenc looked high on pack pricing, but silly on tool pricing compared to Stihl and Husq - circa £800 vs £300 for a strimmer.
Felt that swapping to a battery backpack for our strimming and blowing was viable, getting a proper days use from a overnight charge. Did like Greenworks showing vehicle inverter and also a separate generator as top-up solutions.
If buying, I think I'd get Stihl and Husq out for a demo.
The battery verses petrol dilemma has really put the cat amongst the pigeons for contractors. At Saltex, both Stihl and Hussqvarna reps steered me away from the original conversation about petrol powered hedge trimmers. Stihl were particularly battery orientated, evidenced by the floor space consuming, battery chainsaw demonstration booth. I rather feel I'm understating just how enthusiastic they were to present the benefits of battery. It was full on!
After much reflection my position is that whilst I'd love to go down the battery route (and the Pellenc one if I had a choice), the capital cost is just a tad too high.
I can't wait to get rid of sensitive carburettors, 2 stroke fuel and high pitched screaming engines but the initial outlay has to drop. These machines don't get the job done any quicker, they just save fuel.
It will be intersting to see how the main players pan out over the next 12 months.
Re: Stihl I believe discount is limited with their battery equipment compared to petrol powered.
It is good news for the consumer that more players are coming in to the battery powered market. Build quality is important when chosing which brand. I have seen the stihl tools and there is good reason it is alot cheaper than pellenc. It just wont last as long. Saying that i still use my hs81r on hedges which are too hard core for my pellenc.
Heavy rain is another issue. If water happens to find its way onto any of the circuit boards then there will be a very costly repair. I look after my tools but there is no way in the world i would let an employee loose with any pellenc gear if i was not there.
Good comments, Neil.
For me it would be a massive outlay to go over to electric on all my tools, but I looked at it when my van was cleared out last year so I had to start from scratch.
The issue for me wasn't battery life, which isn't great, or the silly rate of development meaning my kit was obsolete in a year. It was down to the tools costing more, so needing to be run for longer to get a return.
My kit is banged in and out of a van all day, every day. I'm careful, but it's the little things that break, and I could see the batteries, the plug in connectors, that sort of thing breaking. The solid parts like blades, gearboxes etc. wear out, and I'm still prefering to change machines when they are worn rather than replace whole blade systems on hedgecutters. I'd rather run tools till they break, then buy new: that doesn't fit with electric options.
Watching the video for the Bosch mower, you do really need to carry that huge battery pack to charge the mower batteries every hour. That's four batteries at over £100 each, plus the mother of all power packs at what cost?
I hate the idea of asking clients to run an extension lead through a window to charge my tools. It's not professional, so the options are having to carry masses of batteries to power mower, strimmer, blower, hedge cutter etc., and remember to charge them all at night, or to carry a charging system around somehow.
Another thing. Many of us work from home. Charging is going to be a tax issue, and claiming our two-stroke petrol is easier than working out how much of the home electric bill is claimable against tax.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for new tech and quieter, less smelly gear. It's just that I know a few early-adopters with electric cars and they are way off economical or efficient. We're decades away from clean power tools, and you really have to look at what damage the battery components are doing where they are sourced from.
Wasn't this discussed before and Etesia said the dealer could plug your battery in and give you a print out, at the cost of around £20 or so (however wasn't the estimated tax saving similar?)
Paul, I think the idea is that you get a battery or two and a charger and that runs all of the equipment if it is from the same manufacturer. If two batteries last for a day, that is all you need for all of your tools for that day. It may be three or four, but you can apparently buy an invertor for the charger to run in your van.
But the point is you don't need a seperate battery for the strimmer, one for the blower, another for the hedge cutter and so on. You take the battery out of the tool you have just used and put it into the one you are about to use.
The charging issue is minimal in my view until the amount of usage builds. I already charge my hand tools (drill/driver etc) at home and don't notice any additional electricity usage. It will take a while before I have enough batteries on charge for my landscaping tool usage to become an issue. Which is likely to correlate with the number of staff employed so I'll probably need separate premises by then anyway.
Like you, I'm nervous about getting in too early but will be dipping my toe inthe water with a tool, two batteries and a charger in early spring. Looking at what I can learn about the new battery technology it's likely to be Stihl but still checking out Echo.
a few months ago I had a husky battery powered hedge cutter on demo I got about 90 minutes
light cutting out of it the trouble was the charger plug would not fit into a outside waterproof socket if it was heavy cutting you would only get 15 minutes
if you use a inverter regularly on the van it will cut the life of the van battery by half and you need the engine running to avoid a flat battery
if you need a back pack to run a machine for decent length of time its not cord less and could be restrictive also the pack on your back all day
I think batteries have to improve a lot to make them viable for the commercial gardener
also as they keep warning us what happens if we get a power cut during the night (flat batteries the next morning)
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