General Urban Waterloo Updates and Rumours

[danbrotherston]

That's fine for personal use, but landscaping companies that are doing large properties and/or many jobs in one day can't rely on batteries that last 1 hour or swapping them out non stop. Sometimes they're out there 10 hours a day going from job to job. The battery electric technology would need to improve before we started banning gas equipment.

The new electric truck market (I'm thinking specifically of the Ford F-150 Lightning) touts the plethora of electric receptacles on their trucks for running jobsites. I could see a landscaping company driving a truck around as a mobile power plant, and rotating out their batteries throughout the day. The could even use wired equipment plugged directly into the truck.

To quote this Global News article that I found while reading into this: "In most urban areas, Brauer estimates that lawn equipment would be contributing 10 to 20 per cent of overall emissions."
https://globalnews.ca/news/8328175/leaf-...pollution/

It's certainly not a perfect solution, but it's an important subject that needs to be addressed somehow.

I would love it if the F-150 was used for actual work. Sadly, it's designed very poorly for that...a typical contractor would need a trailer at minimum to use as a work truck.

It's only available as a short bed <6 feet long, and the bed is very high off the ground, making loading very difficult, compared with earlier pickups.

Frankly, they don't actually make trucks that are well suited to contractor work anymore, but at least you can get standard sized beds in other places.

Of course, most contractors know this, and prefer more sensible vehicles.

The advertising promoting the vehicles as "working vehicles" is nothing more than a play on toxic masculinity. Suburban office workers might feel more like "real men" if they drive a "work truck".

Your theoretical solution is excellent, but it is very far from what the auto companies are doing.