In one month, I trimmed my grass four times, sliced firewood with a chain saw, tore up lawn to reseed and weed-whacked my overgrown two-acre property.
And I didn’t use a single drop of gasoline.
It's the summer of the "alternative energy" outdoor power tools. From battery mowers and garden cultivators to a new propane-propelled string trimmer, manufacturers and retailers have rolled out consumer machines that run on gas substitutes and boast lower emissions and fewer maintenance headaches.
Ariens Co. of Brillion, Wis., introduced its $3,299 AMP Rider electric-motor mower, which works off rechargeable lead-acid batteries and never needs an oil change. Valley City, Ohio-based MTD Products’ Troy-Bilt brand launched a $169, 7-pound lithium-ion battery trimmer it says can run up to 45 minutes on a single charge. And Vergennes, Vt.-based Country Home Products, known for its futuristic Neuton brand battery push mower, added four new tools with interchangeable nickel-cadmium batteries, including a $109 chain saw.
Lured by slowing sales of gas models and robust interest in alternative-fuel models, home-improvement retailers are allocating more shelf space for these eco-machines. At Home Depot, 2008 was a record year, with double-digit sales growth for nongas outdoor equipment.
According to Wesley Neece, Home Depot senior merchant for lawn and garden, two factors are driving the trend: the greening of America and lingering caution about rising gas prices. Home Depot sells a range of items from corded and battery-powered push mowers to a trimmer just out from Los Angeles-based Lehr that's fueled by a small 16.4-ounce propane canister. Home Depot is just beginning to sell the Ariens battery AMP Rider online.
"There's a lot of innovation with battery technologies," Neece says. "There are longer run times, better performance, and then you have prices coming down. Everything is happening at once."
This market may get more heated, thanks to proposed legislation that would offer consumers a 25% tax credit up to $1,000 toward the purchase of environmentally friendly lawn, garden or forestry power equipment. The Greener Gardens Act was introduced in late April by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and two other Congress members from Vermont. It is designed to provide "immediate incentive for people to purchase clean, alternative-fuel engines that ... operate on little or no fossil fuel."
While nongas, corded and noncorded consumer power equipment has been around for years, the breadth of the offerings is fast-expanding. Towson, Md.-based Black & Decker, which first introduced a battery push mower in 1970, recently has been expanding its line of outdoor tools with interchangeable 18-volt nickel-cadmium battery packs to include everything from a power scrubber for washing boats and cars, to a pruning saw. Marketing focuses on convenience and ease of maintenance as much as the environment.
"We now sell more dollars worth of cordless string trimmers than the corded one," says Joe Newland, Black & Decker's product manager for outdoor products. "There are trade-offs, and what you lose in power, you gain in convenience and weight." He notes that female buyers are a particularly robust audience for nongas tools. "They don't want to start with filling it. They just want to use it."
But it's the entrance of high-end gas-tool makers such as Ariens and Sweden's Husqvarna Group to this consumer niche in the United States that signals the most notable strategy shift. This season, Husqvarna is introducing to its U.S. dealers a rugged, $899 soil cultivator run off a single large lead-acid battery. The company also just launched an "EcoSmart" marketing campaign highlighting products that lessen their impact on the environment, such as its manual push reel mowers (U.S. sales almost doubled in 2008), and its solar-battery hybrid robot Automower.
Part of the rush to develop new nongasoline technologies is driven by increasingly tighter exhaust-emissions standards for outdoor power equipment. Last fall, the Environmental Protection Agency issued new rules requiring a 35% reduction in emissions from new lawn and garden equipment over the next few years. "I would describe the alternative-fuel market as emerging and growing," says Kris Kiser, executive vice president of the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, an Alexandria, Va.-based trade group.
Still, manufacturers express caution about going cold turkey off gas in certain high-demand, heavy-use categories, lest performance suffer and dilute their brands. "A push mower, if it is going to have our name on it, it needs to be more robust than a cultivator," says Gent Simmons, a U.S. product manager for Husqvarna. "We are testing a very powerful premium battery push mower, and we are very close. But before we launch, the quality expectation has to be there."
Likewise Stihl Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Germany's Stihl International GmbH, is proceeding cautiously with alternative-fuel machines while focusing on getting emissions down in its popular gas-powered chain saws and blowers and beefing up corded electric equipment offerings. "It's one of those things where we want to be careful," says Roger Phelps, Stihl's promotional communications manager. "One thing customers are demanding is for performance to still be there. It's cool to have a battery-operated mower, but if it only gets halfway across the yard, that's not very cool."
