No diesel engine is made well these days in my opinion, at least as far as passenger vehicles go.
Emissions systems on diesel engines have made the reliability pretty abysmal. That's not to say improving emissions isn't a good goal, but it was implemented terribly.
Between regulators over prescribing solutions and car companies finding the quickest and cheapest "fix" every step of the way, we ended with horribly complex motors that break down much earlier than before. It'd be interesting to see a comparison of total emissions when a 90s diesel is still on the road today compared to a newer diesel that is effectively junk in 10 years or a couple hundred thousand miles.
Given that one single old car without functioning emission controls will stink up an entire block far more than that entire block full of ordinary, modern traffic, I would expect that the (non-CO2) air pollution from an old diesel is far higher than that from building and operating new diesel vehicles.
Even then, a EURO5 diesel still makes quite a stink. Of course, even an EU6+OPF gasoline car still puts out air akin to a dying dog's fart.
ICE vehicles just can't go away quickly enough (and we should aggressively get stinky vehicles like everything pre-EU5 and loud vehicles like motorcycles and scooters off the road first).
I'm not huge on regulation, but if anything MIV is underregulated. Even in the EU anything that was street-legal at some point in the past 70 years is grandfathered in, nevermind that illegal vehicle modifications - if caught - at most earn a slap on the wrist. That's enormously dumb and doesn't fly anywhere else.
I can’t wait for tiny engines like on things like weed eaters and leaf blowers to go extinct. Noisy, smelly as hell, generally awful.
A lot of cities have banned them now, at least for personal use. (Last time this was debated in my area, some businesses had justifications for why they couldn't just use electric tools, but none of those applied to regular homeowners.)
A lawn service that is working 8-10 hours a day can't use battery tools unless they buy a lot of batteries and/or have a way to recharge them in the field (from a gasoline-powered generator, most likely). So their complaint has some validity.
Yeah, that's one of the issues they raised. The other issue was that they often get called in for jobs where battery tools simply aren't powerful enough. (e.g. clearing a completely overgrown yard as opposed to regular lawn maintenance.)
I have Ego's bicycle handle brush cutter, think a weed whacker on steroids with a metal blade.
That think does some serious work. I've cleared acres of overgrown mess with it. 2 6aH batteries will outlast me (~2 hours) before I need a break and the fast charger tops one up in maybe 30 minutes.
Lawn mowers are really where batteries fall apart. They go through a charge extremely fast, especially if the grass is even moderately overgrown. Most mowers are meant to be finish mowers where you aren't taking off much grass at all, say 1/4" up to maybe 1". Electric mowers really demand that or you'll run out of juice very fast.
It’s not practical for all crews at present due to costs, but as EVs become more entrenched, the problem will solve itself. You keep an extra set or two of batteries that the truck charges and you swap as needed, not that different from having to stop to refill on gas.
Energy density of batteries is improving too, so the amount of time between swaps will be increasing.
Yes, we're definitely moving in that direction.
Sheep and goats don't need to be recharged. They feed while doing the lawn.
My cows do a pretty good job, but I've always heard that the way llamas eat works extremely well for grass management. Something about biting off the grass rather than pulling/tearing it.
BS. Gasoline is just more convenient and cheaper for them. 40V batteries last long enough that you only need a handful of them to last a whole day.
I have 40V electric lawn mower. It takes nearly the full charge on two batteries to cut my average suburban-sized lawn. Sometimes I can't even complete it on that depending how tall the grass is. Add in edge trimming and blowing away the clippings and then multiply that by a number of lawns or larger properties and I think you would need dozens of batteries.
BTW "more convenient and cheaper" are strong arguments when you're in a competitive business. Lawn services are usually just a guy with a truck hustling for customers. The more lawns you can cut the more money you make. Anything that causes downtime such as running out of charged batteries is going to be a large negative.
I have a 56V electric lawn mower. It takes nearly the full charge of one battery to mow my slightly larger suburban lawn. Trimming and blowing and what not gets handled by my second smaller battery. My largest battery isn't even the largest they make for this model line. I've been on the same two batteries for five years now. I use E-Go.
I'd say your system is just undersized for your needs. Judging by having two batteries, it sounds like your system is one of those based around hand power tools batteries and then attempted to scale those up to lawn mowers. I've mostly heard bad things about this path. There's a lot of other experiences out there.
We have a large lawn, and a pile of broken eGO products. They wear out fast and cannot be repaired.
We started replacing them witg Milwaukee lawn tools. We frequently hit overheat cutoffs, but haven’t broken any yet. We do have a pile of dead small eGO and Milwaukee batteries though. These days, we only buy the biggest capacity we can. Those tend not to die as fast.
Electric is clearly the future for this stuff, despite our problems. The remaining gas powered stuff is all > 10HP.
Honda has a new electric mower coming out that can do like 12-15 acres on a charge.
We're talking a commercial mower though. I haven't seen prices yet, but I'd guess you're in the $15k range.
I have a 40V (well, 2x 20V) mower, and use two pairs of batteries to mow the lawn. But that's fine; between the lawn mower, the leaf blower, the weed whacker, and the snow blower, I've got plenty of spares.
Insane that there's a market for a dude with a lawn mower these days when you can get a good enough robot mower for $1000 ...
Good enough for what? I'd love to have a lawn mower which can dump grass clippings in my compost pile (mulching them and leaving them behind is better for the lawn, I know, but my wife is allergic to grass so this would basically mean she never gets to use the lawn). Also, we have two apple trees which spend a few months dropping apples on the lawn, so I'd like to have a robot lawn mower which can pick up the apples and toss them in the compost pile too. Oh, and there's a gate separating the front yard from the back yard, so it would be great if it can open and close the gate.
Robot lawn mowers are getting better, but I have yet to see one which can handle every situation that humans routinely handle.
> ICE vehicles just can't go away quickly enough
We do have to either replace them with something else or stop owning personal vehicles.
The end goal may be better, but that transition will be long and it will break plenty of things along the way.
It really doesn’t have to. I’d say look at Norway but you’ll dismiss it as a rich country without looking up the actual reason behind their transition’s success. I’d say look at China but you’d say yeah but that’s China.
We can make the same decision and move fast in the direction, we just choose not to
Norway has done a great job transitioning, that's for sure. They are a richer country and that helps fund the massive government spending going into the transition, but I wouldn't dismiss their success either.
It helps that so much of their energy production already comes from hydro, that avoids the challenge of replacing ICE vehicles with electric cars in front of coal power plants.
I haven't been to Norway but I have been to Sweden, I was impressed with their primarily electric public transportation. I'd have to learn more about how Norway handled the transition and how it would translate to the US; for example average commute distance, use of public transportation, etc. I'd also be curious how much their government has been spending per capita, they do heavily subsidize the transition with things like tax incentives.
Transition is almost done around Oslo, and we are doing fine.
Do people there only use cars around town or for short road trips?
I know the trains in Sweden were great when I was there a few years ago, I assume Norway would be similar.
> Do people there only use cars around town or for short road trips?
Modern mid-size EVs have a range of more than 400-500km. To put this into perspective, the drive from Oslo to Bergen, the other end of the country (latitudinal) is about 460km and takes 7h. You could possibly make that without even recharging, if you manage to sit still, without a break, for 7 hours.
A classic usage is driving to the cabin.
Now, yes few people drive as far as possible without breaks.
> one single old car without functioning emission controls will stink up an entire block far more than that entire block full of ordinary, modern traffic
My son's 1963 Dart (daily driver) puts out far less smell than a lot of pickup trucks in this neighborhood.
And the Dart is certainly cleaner than modern choker-style pickup trucks.