Agree; our yard is 60x120 feet, or 7200 sq.ft. We had a Lawnboy 2 cycle gas mower since 1986. In 2008 I was away a lot and my wife did not like starting the Lawnboy. So we reluctantly bought a US-made Neuton, made in New England, with a Taiwanese 48 volt battery.
It’s very light (plastic deck, etc.), and my wife loves it. It will cut our grass, even when it’s long and dense in early summer. However, for a larger yard, like jt’s, you would need 2 batteries and ahve one fully charged ready when the first one dies.
The difference between cars and domestic appliances & tools is, of course, that you don’t leave home and “refuelling” is not a problem. We have 2 batteries for our electric lawnmower in case we have to cut wet, long grass.
Like others, I love my power yard tools, like the Weed Eater, and many power tools. This spring we are buying an electric, pole mounted, small elctric chain saw, which will allow me to trim our very large trees. It beats hiring an arborist and spend several hundrd dollars each spring.
YES you have…Not in this thread…but other threads…You have ONE agenda…You HATE cars…and you live in the city…and believe everyone no matter where you live should take trains…You’ve dedicated two threads to promoting the US spends 100 BILLION dollars running rails all over the country.
Here’s just ONE of your quotes…in the thread on Trains you started.
"Yes, it is a top need to rebuild the infrastructure of the USA and get us into the 21st century before the rest of the industrialized world leaves us in the dust (from car pollution). "
You began with a discussion of electric vehicles. I, for one, gave you the benefit of the doubt and expressed my enthusiasm for electric vehicles and my optimism for the technology. Now it’s become clear that I was in error in giving you the benefit of the doubt. This is clearly another attempt to promote your misguided “rid the world of evil cars” agenda. Most of us here have been very generous and allowed you latitude in this thread. Don’t mess it up by dissing people who disagree with you.
By the way, someone asked you what type of vehicle you own. I’ll extend the question to what kind of car your wife drives as well. Historically you’ve been very averse to answering legitimate questions of a very relevant nature. This presents a very strong image of hypocrasy. Hypocrasy is the antithesis of credibility. I’d suggest that if you’re serious you begin to answer some of these questions.
Actually, SOSmountainbike, I don’t see any of you jumping on Caddyman for his comments questioning the premise of car culture, which shows these posts attacking me are personal and irrational. I posted this thread and have given total respect to the reasonable comments. If you think Mike is “right” in his angry nonsense remarks, then I have to question your own veracity.
Concerning these questions that I have ignored, what you’re talking about is logical fallacy. Whether someone owns a car or has never touched one or owns a train company doesn’t change the facts of an argument. Two plus two will equal four and will not equal five no matter what, whether the person who says it is a good person, a bad person, a child or Einstein. Same goes for a discussion of car culture and alternatives. That’s why I tend to post things from credible sources – Bill Ford, NPR reports, NASA and Scientific American (admittedly the Sierra Club has a POV but they are conservative in their approach).
Concerning your “hypocrisy” argument, that’s also totally beside the point. First of all everybody compromises in some way on what they would like to do in a perfect world; this hardly makes them hypocrites. Also, pro-car agitators who support private car ownership to the exclusion of decent public transit will turn around and call an environmentalist a hypocrite because she is forced to drive a car for lack of options. That’s twisted and mean-spirited, besides being simply irrelevant to the argument.
This is a novel idea–eliminate all SUVs. The government, of course, will have to buy the SUVs from the owners. After we have eliminated SUVs, we do the same thing for minivans. We then replace the minivans with crossover vehicles. We then eliminate the crossover vehicles, but bring back the SUVs, but the SUVs must be hybrid vehicles. We keep repeating this cycle. It puts people to work, eliminates one type of vehicle at a time–sort of a glorified cash for clunkers program.
Everything regarding our transportation choices is personal, including how we want our tax dollars spent, but we discuss it out in the open because we have nothing to hide. You clearly want to influence our personal transportation choices, but you refuse to disclose your own. How sad that you must blatantly conceal your hypocrisy, calling it “personal,” while you criticize us for our personal choices.
It’s not that hard of a question to answer. You aren’t being asked for your medical history, just whether or not you drive a car and what kind. This is cartalk.com, you know, where we talk about our cars.
Wow. If the type of car you drive is a state secret, it must be something special. Let me guess, is it a Suburban? I bet it is either that or a huge honking SUV. If it were anything else, you wouldn’t be ashamed to say what it is.
The problem with fuel cells is that they are just another energy storage device, not a power source (no doubt you realize this). We can already make hydrogen cheaply and cleanly. Jay Leno probably has tanks of it in his garage. Where are the rest of us going to fill up? Batteries pollute exactly as much as fuel cells while in use, 0. It’s producing the power or the hydrogen that causes the pollution. Hydrogen is not the fuel, anymore than lithium is. The fuel is whatever we burn to produce the hydrogen or charge the battery.
A couple years ago I ran into a squad of greenpeas types who wanted me to sign a petition to ban coal-fired power plants. I said to the girl with the clipboard “Great! So you’re in favor of nuclear power!” She said “NO!” and recoiled in horror. I did not sign.
“BTW, this is ‘Repair and Maintenance’. What’s your car question again?”
Just to extend every possible bit of fairness, it’s easy to accidentally post in Repair and Maintenance when this is obviously a topic for General Discussion. It’s a deficiency of the website to not have a blank value at the top of the dropdown list and force a choice rather than default to Repair and Maintenance.