Hello I'm Austin Jarrett from Allett Mowers and today I want to talk to you about this;
Lithium-Ion batteries and how it's affecting the garden machinery industry. If you're thinking
about battery power from ten and twenty years ago where batteries just lose their recharge ability
after a short period you need to think again. This 40 volt 4 amp hour battery has tons of energy in
it and the Lithium-Ion battery market has changed a lot. We're talking with this battery here in
normal conditions 1800 discharges before it loses just 15% of the charge that you could give it when
it was brand new which is quite amazing. This is our Liberty 30 product this Liberty product range
is all driven by this battery. After four seasons this has become our most popular product segment.
When we speak to our customers we've asked them why they're loving battery power in their garden
machinery so let's look at those reasons. The first reason the customers love battery powered
equipment is that it's just so easy to use for example there is no pull cord for the engine,
there is no cord leading to the house via an extension lead and once the battery is in then
I'm just pushing the button and pulling this lever and the power is engaged. Battery power products
as well are generally much lighter than a petrol engine version so this 12 inch mower is really
quite lightweight and what does that give in terms of advantages? If I need to put this into the car,
if I need to take it up steps or even put it into storage it just makes it all so much easier but of
course just using the product over the lawn the lighter the machine is the easier it becomes.
The second reason that our customers are telling us that they're choosing to go battery-powered
in their garden machinery is of course the environment. By choosing battery electric
and powering our products by electricity of course we're transferring the environmental
concern over to our governments and how they choose to generate our electricity so that's
a great thing if we're not burning fossil fuels in our gardens but of course there's
also the local pollution side of things, not creating smoke in the garden. A lot of the
battery garden machinery equipment is actually replacing two-stroke engines where you add oil
into the fuel they create a lot of smoke they're difficult to start and they're extremely noisy
and that is a really good environmental reason to be using battery electric.
So the next biggest reason is about noise levels. Battery power garden equipment is
undoubtedly much quieter. What does that mean? I don't have to worry about when I choose to mow
my lawn and whether I'm disturbing my neighbours Sunday barbecue. I might be a mother who gets the
opportunity to mow the lawn after the kids have gone to bed or I might be a shift worker and I
just have unsocial hours when I can actually hit and mow my lawn so that is a really big
factor too. The next reason is actually about reduced costs. The cost of Lithium-Ion battery
technology now is reducing very quickly and in fact in the Allett company we've worked really
hard at driving the costs of these products down so that a battery electric equivalent to
a petrol is lower cost. The running cost of these products is less. To charge this four
amp hour battery in the UK costs about five pence about seven cents and that compares
with in our tests with rotary mowers at about a factor of ten for rotary mowing fuel costs. The
batteries are the most expensive component of these products and the other thing that
we've done at Allett is work with an existing manufacturer of batteries called GreenWorks and
we can take that battery and put it into a whole range of other products to help spread the cost of
that battery. So here are some fine examples of new garden machinery that is available to
drive with the GreenWorks 40 volt battery and normally these would have had two stroke engines
in them and with the use of battery power this now makes these machines like blowers that are
traditionally very noisy actually much quieter. So I have battery I have a long reach hedge cutter,
chainsaw and a strimmer and I find all these machines really easy to use I just take the
battery in and out of these products and switch them with the Liberty 43 that I use at home.
So a product like this which is driven by battery and electric motors the servicing costs are just
so much lower it becomes an electrical appliance as opposed to an engine driven product where
if we're honest the frustration of starting a petrol engine at the beginning of the season,
the changing of the oil, the keeping the fuel clean so that you don't have starting
and running issues, air filters that need to be clean of course all of those service
elements just disappear with an electrical system like this. So with those reduced
costs and that reduced hassle the electric system offers some very serious advantages.