so the battery revolution is on us it's with us we have seen more and more battery kit enter the
market in pretty much every single industry every single category wherever you go now everybody is
talking about battery-powered machines cars vans tractors and now lawn mowers ride on mowers are
now a very popular thing to go for when it comes to buying lawn equipment having it battery powered
there is already a multitude of strimmers chainsaws blowers rotary lawn mowers everything
you can think of is pretty much already battery powered but the revolution of ride-on mowers has
just hit us we are doing a series of videos where we're testing lots of different ride-on-mowers and
they are being shown on our youtube channel so you can watch throughout the series that we've
done on lots of different battery mowers but today it's all about battery versus traditional petrol
so we've got this beautiful alco t15 here which is running a 15 horsepower single cylinder engine
with a 93 centimeter cutting deck and then we've got the new alco battery rider which is the r85.1
which is 81 centimeter cut are they the same no they're very very different we'll go through why
they're different in a little while but we're haze machinery this is our youtube channel
please consider subscribing let's crack on so today i've invited lewis down with this amazing
little battery ride-on it is a collecting ride on the same as this one and we're going to put
them through their paces to see if the battery stuff is as good as the petrol but first of all
we're just going to run you through the machines so i think the easiest thing to start with james
is what are the similarities between battery and petrol pretty simple i've got a steering wheel
and i've got tight turn radius i don't know about my type 10 radius which is pretty good
cutting height i'm all about cutting i've got 10 positions from 25 all the way up to 130.
well i've only got six height cutting positions but mine does go down lower than yours to 20 mil
but there's a good range again when it comes to the grass box i've got 190 litre collector
it's a telescopic lever i've got 220 liter grass collector with a telescopic leader
when it comes to where we're setting i've got quite a nice comfortable high back seat
i could probably nearly fall asleep on this one if i wanted yeah fair enough quite comfortable what
about when it comes to the controls i've got a forward and back rocker switch and also infinitely
variable speed what about you i've got infinitely variable forward and reverse hydrostatic with on
the two pedals so forward and reverse on the pedal further you push it down the faster you go same
principle on the back so i guess the only thing we've really got different is what we've got under
the bonnet for you and under here for me okay all right you start start your engine all right
i'll start my engine started where's the chair i don't have any job all right i'll start my engine
that's not much louder than an average hoover no it isn't sorry vacuum cleaner
so that's the main difference is obviously noise level and ease of use and the other thing where'd
you put your petrol mate i don't have any i just have a charger um underneath here
because i've got a petrol tank good old gasoline engine in underneath 15 horsepower over which
is extremely noisy compared to such a modern actually sorry i've still got the engine runner
what's your runtime like on a on a full charge full charge on this i can do up to six thousand
square meters or two to two and a half hours okay so six and a half thousand six and a half
thousand square meters yeah yeah whereas this one on a tank of fuel will probably do about about an
acre probably on a tank of fuel maybe a little bit more but obviously it all depends on how
you're driving them yeah so sometimes with with anything it's a bit like if my wife drives the car
compared to if i drive the car if i drive the car the fuel consumption's a lot worse same principle
mowers the same principle battery-powered machinery but obviously there's a lot more
variant regards to cutting a lawn because if your grass is thick wet damp long short it's
going to be there are very different variables on how long all different things last i guess the
other thing you have to be honest and consider is my refill and recharge time is 12 hours
and how long's yours about four and a half minutes yeah so again on that if you do have a huge big
area you need to cut constantly and often maybe the petrol option might be better for you so with
obviously a long charge time with that being able to refill petrol on this there's pros and cons to
all as of most things yes this mower is bigger than what that one is it's got a slightly wider
cut and it's designed it's got bigger collector everything is a little bit larger on it wheels
absolutely everything we're going to now put our mowers through some nice devon thick field grass
because this isn't lawn seed this isn't a basic lawn we're going to see how well they perform is
the little new modern rider going to be as good as its petrol equivalent let's find out let's go
just there james and i showed you the differences now we want to show you the most important thing
how well do they cut and collect grass so james is there on his let's say old school older version of
the tractor and i'm here on my new modern battery machine we're going to drive down as close as we
can to one another hopefully not crashing and then come back and look at the quality of the cut and
see how much grass we've picked up along the way so i'll start my engine and start my blades ratio
so if you're looking up through there to be fair you can hardly see the difference of quality
between the two but that's not overly thick grass so we're going to do the same again over there
unbelievable i can't believe he crashed into me i feel a bit of a warranty claim coming
i see there's plenty space right so there's more cutting we've got empties and grass boxes yeah
so
welcome
so
you might be wondering why we were going around random all the time
the main reason being is we didn't discuss what we're going to try to start with
but the good news about that is that if you look back at the law now you can't actually
see where that one's cut or where this one's cut louis reckons it's experienced
that we've got the cutting heights the same yeah but it's yeah there's more just pure luck
but that's worked really really well so it's nice that you know you can't see the difference
in other words that cuts just as well as this does yes it's a little bit narrower it's got a smaller
grass box so this is better for wider larger open spaces but that one's more nimble and around
the trees and in tight spaces very impressed very impressed that's good can i have a go now
okay because you do usually most things thanks mate appreciate it
also why is it every time i come here i end up cutting your grass and doing all the work for you
i'm not really sure how that's fair i don't know but the way he turns up there's always
grass to cut you know that's right i was terrifying last time it worked well there's
raking that was manual proper manual work at least this time you just get to sit down
i think i think we can summarize by saying it doesn't matter if you're going for battery power
or petrol power you still get a good quality car you do yeah it doesn't really matter whatever
suits you whether it's petrol battery is going to do what you wanted to do and obviously alco german
engineered you can't really go wrong european made machine for collecting grass you can't beat
it it's great anyway thank you very much for watching it's been an absolute pleasure please
consider subscribing to our youtube channel and we'll see you in the next one thank you