April 27, 2023
A man in unincorporated Antioch in Illinois was charged on Tuesday with shooting and killing his neighbor over a noisy leaf blower earlier this month. 59-year-old William Martys was working in his yard with a leaf blower when he was shot in the head and killed during an argument with his neighbor, 79-year-old Ettore Lacchei, who the Lake County Sheriff's Office said had "various perceived grievances" with Martys.
The total cost of ownership of an ice mower/trimmer/blower/chainsaw is lower.
The biggest problem is finding a shop that’ll work on electronics of any kind at all, let alone at an affordable rate. Even the most rural county has a small engine shop somewhere.
On the one hand electric lawn equipment has fewer moving parts to fail and require maintenance, on the other the things that fail are massive: motor, battery, control board. When one of those drops out it’s unlikely you’ll find a replacement at all, let alone for a price lower than buying an entire replacement unit.
Of course the type of engineering and economics that lead to this situation has been in effect for low end ice equipment for the last ten years or so as well.
E: I just had someone bring in a nonfunctional electric trimmer that needs a complete tear down and cleaning because it got left out in the rain. Electric stuff has a completely different storage requirement than ice. Leave the gas pushmower out in the lawn over the winter (gotta keep those property values down)? Just drain the tank, replace the 50 cents worth of tubing that rotted, fill it back up and get going! At worst you gotta clean the carburetor or replace it if it’s a new one with a plastic carb. Still ~$20 in annual maintenance.
Leave an electric mower or trimmer out in the weather for a week and its gonna need significant work.
I know people “should” put their shit in a shed or inside, but plenty of people grew up with the ice maintenance ideas firmly established and knowing how to barely take care of their equipment can’t be underestimated.