Cordless lawn mower

After months of thinking about it , reading reviews , talking to others ... I ordered a new EGO 21" 56 volt rechargeable lawn mower.   My old gas mower still starts on the first pull but the front wheel drive quit working several years ago, the handle is zip tied into place and the beast weights a ton ! I'm out of town 6 days a week this year ... the job of mowing the lawn has passed to my wife (she is not happy about it !)  A very light mower that needs no gas , has no rope to pull, starts with a button and hangs on the wall when not in use, seems like just the tool to make her and my life easier. I will post back with pictures and reviews after receiving and trying out this new tool. If I like it ... maybe there will be an ego 56 volt chainsaw in the future!  Edit/update Changed my order this morning to the 7.5 amp 21" self propelled model from home depot.

21" EGO self propelled 56 volt 7.5 amp battery and charger. First time use review is A+++ !!! The wife loves it. This thing is great ! Rear wheel drive that's  Fast .. like really fast, if you set it to be. One lever all wheel height adjustment, bagger or side discharge. Ran 45 minutes never missed a beat, was still at 25 % when she finished . Took 30 minutes to fully recharge. Quiet , really quiet !! sounds like a box window fan. You could mow at 5 AM and not bother anyone. Light, easy to push . No fuel no oil... nothing like the loud smelly, heavy gas mower. Heck you can tip it on its side to clean grass buildup without anything leaking out. Five stars for this one so far ! If I have issues that arise I will report back later.  

Yes! if you are gonna mow, cordless electric is the way to go.  We got a different brand ( a kobalt  https://permies.com/t/55403/cordless-electric-Kobalt-lawn-mower) and love it.  It came with two batteries so one could be charging while the other mows.  No one complains about mowing anymore. I've practically ripped out my shoulder starting pull start gas mowers in the past and it's such a joy to mow with no gas fumes    
I envy the rear wheel drive in the ego though...if ours ever wears out that one might be next.

I have the EGO lawnmower, and I am completely satisfied with it. I also find the large battery and charger to be very useful when using my chainsaw and blower. The big battery isn't as prone to overheating and it holds twice as much power. The 2 Amp Hour batteries charged up in 15 minutes, when using the big charger.

https://permies.com/mobile/t/54724/cordless-electric-lawnmower

I completely agree. I purchased a 40 volt mower by Kobalt at Lowes 5 years ago and it is still going strong. I will never go back to gas. On reviews, I see that some people have posted some bad experiences with the Kobalt Lawn Mower. This is unfortunate if it has steered people away from battery-charged mowers.  There may have been a few bugs or quality control issues to iron out, but the mower remains one of the best investments I ever made. I can mow my entire lawn even when it is long and slightly wet and still have enough battery juice left over to use the Kobalt blower.

I've had the opposite experience with a cordless mower, after the first year of very limited use the mower will no longer start with a fully charged battery so either the battery failed or some connection failed, a few months outside of warranty of course. But I've replaced all the weedy grass with mulch and only pick the occasional Bermuda grass that works its way over from the neighbor's yard.

Sorry to hear that, Mark. May I ask what brand you were using? Like I said, there seems to be some quality control issues. It's too bad, because the Kobalt Lawn Mower has completely changed the way I feel about mowing. It's so easy.

Mine is a Ryobi 40V lithium, my guess would be a bad battery as I think back on it, as it seemed to run out of juice fairly quick when I did use it but it was the first cordless mower I've used so I lacked perspective on that. Fingers crossed that moving forward I won't have to deal with any mowing that involves more than a scythe or hand sickle for chop and drop and/or composting!

It's been a year now that I have had my Ego mower and I can't say enough about it !   Great ! BEST BUY!  Works flawlessly ! Haven't run the 7.5 battery down yet ! Quiet ! 5 am mowing's at 55 degrees instead of  9 am 85 degrees or 3 pm 95 degree !   I liked this tool so much I have bought the string trimmer (7.5 bat to heavy needs a 2 hr bat) It works awesome ! No screaming motor next to your ear !  Next purchase will be the chain saw !  I don't have any deciduous trees but that leaf blower might be just the thing to get the last of the fly ash out of my rocket mass heater.  
All of my cordless tools with a lithium battery are great. I have quite a few Makita hand tools  that have  no issues and i'm going to buy the harbor freight 20 vt 1/2" drive impact gun next!

Mark Tudor wrote:Mine is a Ryobi

I've never had any good experiences with Ryobi.
Luckily,  they failed early, and I returned them.

Thought I would re-bump this and just inquire if any "do-it-yourself" enthusiasts have replaced their gas engines on push mowers with electric.  Although there are some YouTube videos that discuss it, I was hoping some members here had done so and can suggests sources for DC electric motors (even recycled from other appliances??), Watt/Horsepower requirements of electric vs gas, optimum voltage (12V, 24V....more?) and other suggestions.  It would be nice to do a conversion and see how it all holds up.  Thanks!

I could kick myself for not grabbing "broken" electric mowers from the side of the road. Some of the older ones had brushed motors, but most of the ones you can find now are brushless DC motors (BLDC). They have no brushes to wear out or fail prematurely from improper installation. The only things that can go wrong are the motor controller, which you can often find cheap replacements for, or something with the battery pack which usually isn't the entire pack gone bad and can be fixed or replaced for a fraction of the cost of a new pack.

I personally would hunt around on Craigslist or similar and find one for cheap or free to fix up. The chances of the motor itself being destroyed is insanely low, so if you can rotate it by hand and the bearings seem good then it is probably going to be good for a long time to come. Even if you pay $50 for a good chassis with the blade and motor, that's likely going to be much cheaper and easier than retrofitting a motor to an old chassis. Just getting the relationship of the motor, the blade, and the ground right is going to take a substantial amount of engineering that has already been accomplished on one that came electric from the factory. If it comes with a working charger then you are that much ahead. If the charger is bad then maybe that's all it needs to get going!

I'm really not a fan of the nomenclature used on various tools to describe their "voltage". Most of them use Lithium Ion 18650 cells in a series-parallel configuration. Knowing the number of cells in series is the important part so the motor controller won't prematurely shut off with an input voltage that's too low, or blow up capacitors (or worse) with too high an input voltage. There are certain numbers of cells in series which are more common, so you would likely want to target one of these common "sizes" or "voltages" which would be easier if tools didn't fudge their voltage numbers differently than other implementations of Lithium Ion cells. It should be simple enough to do a search online to see what the exact details are for any mass produced machine you might find for sale.

One point that is noteworthy is that you can always run a BLDC motor at a lower voltage than maximum if you get an appropriate motor controller. My fat bike was originally 13s "48V" and I had a spare 10s "36V" controller that fit in the original compartment. The top speed is slightly reduced and probably a fair bit less torque, but it rides fine. Since I had everything on hand I had the bike rebuilt and running in one weekend. This would be particularly useful if, for instance, you find a less common size like a 14s and have batteries and controllers for the more common 13s. The small drop in voltage by decreasing the power by one cell in series shouldn't kill performance. By building a higher amperage pack (more cells in parallel) there will be less voltage drop under load, and may be comparable to the running voltage of the stock setup. You can go the other way and overvolt things, but that has a much higher probability of burning out a motor or controller if you aren't careful. In either case, it's probably wise to add replaceable fuse close to the battery that is smaller than the maximum safe output from the battery pack or Battery Management System (BMS).

For me, I already had invested in "36V" (10s or 10 cells in series, 42V max) for my electric bike, so it was an obvious choice to go with a "40V" Ryobi when it was on sale. Like I said, I could kick myself for riding around after I first built the bike and not stopping to grab a handful of electric mowers I had seen at the curb on garbage day. The battery is the most complex and expensive part, so once you get a good grasp on that, you can save yourself quite a bit of money and reuse good cells that are otherwise sitting in a warehouse, waiting for legislation to force them to be recycled before they were ever even used!

I have heard good things about the DeWalt cordless lawn care equipment, but below is the cordless lawn mower I'd really like to get.

Sorry... I couldn't resist.