The Business Case: Landscapers talk battery-powered tools and robotic mowers
We attended the Kress Next Summit in Colorado Springs in early April. At this event, Kress introduced a pair of robotic mowers, and you can read that story here. Interesting new products, sure, but the event was equally captivating for the discussions with landscape business owners who share real-world business examples of using battery-powered equipment (Panel 1) and robotic mowers (Panel 2). We break down those two discussions below.
Introduction: Electrification and consumer demand
“Our industry is luckier than the car industry,” said Don Gao, CEO of Positec, the parent company of Kress. “We have consumer demand. And tool manufacturers are responding.” Consumer demand, Gao acknowledges, is not the same as Professional User demand. “For commercial use, adoption and penetration [of battery-powered equipment] is below 5%,” he said.
Why so low? Gao points to four reasons, actually assumptions made by a wide range of consumers – both professional and residential – about battery-powered equipment. Here are those reasons, in brief. In this, I also cover the viewpoint of landscapers who spoke at the event.
1. Power
I first met Gao at Equip Expo in October in Louisville and he told me then, “People don’t like batteries because they think the equipment does not have enough power.” Six months later, Gao remains steadfast in his belief in the power of batteries. He showed two graphs comparing the power and torque curves of gas and electric motors. “We are turning that problem into a positive. It’s not just equal power to gas. It’s more power.” Gao admits, however, that electric blowers are not as powerful as gas-powered blowers. But that’s the only example, he said.
2. Charging (refueling) time
Not all batteries or chargers are created equal when it comes to charging time. Kress has built its differentiation around, in part, its advertised “8-minute charge” using the company’s Cyber Tank charger (when charging one battery at a time in the charger’s “boost” mode, according to the Kress website). Gao said that the Stihl AL 501 is the next fastest charger available, and Kress has measured that charger at a 39-minute charge time.
3. Battery needs
Growing landscape companies need more batteries to power more equipment and crews. How expensive are batteries? Costs vary widely depending on battery size – voltage, amp hours or watt hours. A standard 60V 5Ah battery from Kress retails for $329; while a 60V Cyber Pack battery can cost more than $500. Charging systems and the electrical infrastructure to support them can add thousands more to that cost.
“The most expensive tool kit in the world is the cheapest to operate,” said Gao, referring to battery-operated power equipment. “You are purchasing 10 years of gasoline up front. That is why you get the long-term savings.”
Gao covered the details of operating costs (see image above). “If you change to Kress, you will save between $1000 and $2000 per year.” Gao encouraged landscape pros at the event to challenge and verify for those numbers for themselves, noting that costs for fuel and electricity vary by region.
4. Battery lifespan
Both commercial users and homeowners have expressed hesitancy about buying battery equipment. How long will this often more expensive equipment last? How long do batteries live and what can I do with them when they’re dead? Can I fix them, recycle them?
The life span of power equipment batteries varies from one maker to the next. Some are marketed to have a lifespan between 500 and 1,000 lifecycles before they’re dead (and recycled). Stihl says its AP 500S battery can withstand up to 2,400 lifecycles. Other companies frame this in warranties of 2 or 3 years. The Kress 60V Cyber Pack batteries are rated for 3,000 lifecycles or an 8-year span of warranty coverage. (An operation named Call2Recycle is tackling battery recycling with support from Kress and other manufacturers.)
Panel 1: Landscapers share the business case
Gao makes four similar points when speaking about why landscape companies have been reluctant to switch from gas-powered to battery-powered equipment. And in panel discussions that took place later in the day, landscape business leaders addressed these topics directly.
1. Disappointing experience with other systems
This could be caused by batteries with a short run time or lifespan, though warranty can solve that issue. Or it could be related to charging infrastructure. Battery charging systems are a focus of many manufacturers today, even those not solely focused on battery-powered equipment.
2. Charging infrastructure needs
Gao said this is the most asked question and it’s not that complicated and we have experience meeting the needs of landscape business owners here.
Kress invited Brett Carter, energy consultant and former executive with Duke and Xcel Energy, to speak at the event. He said, “Utilities are very interested in giving rebates to lower the cost of infrastructure and moving away from [gas-powered] ‘spark products’ that could cause fires.”
“We don’t need your subsidies to help with the cost advantage of Kress batteries,” said Gao, “but we’ll take it.”
3. Upfront costs
Gao is referring to the cost of batteries, mostly, but also the “cost” of eliminating gas-powered equipment that still works in fleets.
It’s as much about ongoing costs, according to Justin White, CEO of K&D Landscaping in Watsonville, Calif. “We looked at all the work and tasks throughout a day, and we saw spark plugs fouling and issues with gasoline and two-stroke equipment, etc. Switching to battery powered tools, we saved 10-15 minutes per person per day, and that multiplies.”
At the meeting, I asked the group of landscapers about the business condition of traditional fuel. How much do these companies and their crews consider the gasoline they’re buying? “With two-strokes, most manufacturers recommend higher octane fuel and that’s more expensive, if gas stations even have it,” said Joe Langton, owner of the Langton Group of landscapers in northern Illinois. (NOTE: Stihl and Echo, for example, recommend the use of 89-octane gas, and that’s often 25% more expensive than regular gas in most places.) “And water in gas cans,” said Langton, “is a big problem for us.”
California, with its mandated transition to electric equipment, created the CORE program that incentivized the purchase of zero-emission landscaping equipment. Chris Angelo, CEO of Stay Green landscaping covering Southern California, said, “There were some very rich incentives that we took advantage of.” It not only let them acquire new battery-powered equipment but it helped them dispose of gas-powered equipment.
Greyson Walldorff, founder & president of Lawn Capital in Atlanta, Ga., was not as lucky, with no state-sponsored incentives. “We got killed. There’s no secondary market to unload four crews worth of handheld gas equipment. We lost it. And we don’t want to give it to our guys who will then work Saturdays and Sundays on their own routes.”
The accounting impacts are real, too. “Gas-powered equipment typically has been disposable, like handheld equipment right,” said Angelo. “Our branch manager is the one making the decision. He’s buying it and then we’re telling him don’t keep repairing it. With batteries it’s a balance sheet discussion; it’s longer term. We look at it differently than we did in the past.”
4. Workers’ acceptance
This topic is an important one to Gao, who believes, as he told me last October at Equip Expo, that battery-powered equipment can improve the health and quality of life for commercial landscape workers.
“Today, they may say, ‘Oh I like the smell of gas.’ But tomorrow?” Gao continues to talk about potential problems from fumes, noise and vibration from gas motors, plus the frustration of pull starting or fouled spark plugs. “In reality, battery-powered tools are much easier to use.”
“I didn’t realize the amount of dissatisfaction our crews had with the fumes and the exhaust of gas equipment,” said Justin White. “I thought, these are landscapers, they get their hands dirty every day, these guys don’t care about gas fumes. The truth is, they really do care.”
“As we started to get more feedback of the change [from gas to battery power], you notice how much those fumes got soaked up into your clothes and soaked up into their lives. The feedback loop has been really positive. Their quality of life has increased right through sound and vibration and pollutants or lack of.”
“As we start to hire a younger generation of team members, we’re seeing them put a higher value on their health and their well-being. They see their dad or their uncle who can barely walk at the end of their career because of the way they’ve used their bodies and they don’t want to go down that same path.”
White’s shift might have been simpler since California is mandating the shift to batteries. Not the case for Greyson Walldorff, founder & president of Lawn Capital. “We had a pretty tough time in Atlanta. No one is forcing us to switch to batteries. We’re an outlier. And we lost a lot of employees – management, operations people, people in the field. Every time we converted [from gas to battery] or added battery equipment, we lost people.”
“Today though, it’s established, proven and working with the workforce. It’s in our culture; we are an electric-based company. For that reason, we have higher retention. People appreciate it now. It changed the workforce. It changed who we hired. It changed our culture.”
Along with the preferred use of battery equipment these businesses are seeing, there is a gamification developing. “We started to see the younger guys saying, ‘Hey I got my battery to last 3 1/2 hours today on the blower,’ like it’s a competition,” said White. “We started to have those individuals do the training after hours or in the morning instead of the supervisors or the leaders doing the training. It’s the peers doing the training. Certain people in your company are going to step up and be advocates for this transition. You have to make sure you give those individuals stage time to share their positive experience.”
Panel 2: Robotization
Robotic mowers are building a history in America, and it started with primarily Husqvarna automowers, the originally dominant robots bound by boundary wires buried in the yards of early adopters. That technology is quickly being replaced by mowers using satellite and GPS control, or other vision-based service.
On the commercial side, larger zero-turn mowers equipped with software from Greenzie, or more industrial models like those from RC Mowers, are growing autonomous business for early-adopter landscaping businesses, sportsfield managers and municipalities.
Kress is introducing two new robotic mowers – one now and one “coming soon” – in an attempt to further advance robotization for professional users. The KR 800 Cut and Go mower is coming to market first. It’s a 40-in. machine that landscape pros can use on multiple job sites. It will be ready for sale in the spring of 2026. The company showed one image of a larger 60-in. autonomous mower, model KR 804, whose availability timing is to be announced.
Though it’s early in the cycle for both mowers, Kress was eager to talk about the business opportunities for robotic mowers at the commercial level. The company has existing, residential focused robotic mowers intended to live and work in one location. Their unique-in-the-market focus is satellite-enabled control that does not require an on-site antenna.
Location accuracy and safety are main focus points for Kress. The new robotic mowers use 360-degree vision. “Whatever technology is on cars right now is on this mower,” said Don Gao. “For accuracy, we are talking about 1 or 2 centimeters, where others are talking about decimeters. We need the accuracy for safety reasons.”
Robots at work today
“The reason I started with robots was a request by a client who spent three months of the year on his property vacationing,” said Carlos Teles, who owns Teles Landscaping, serving properties on Martha’s Vineyard. “The client asked me to explore robotic mowers to help maintain his 10 acres of manicured lawn. Husqvarna mowers with the boundary wires were the ones widely available at the time. But the boundary wires kept getting cut with other landscaping work.”
When a local dealer took on Kress robotic mowers, he called Teles to have him take a look. Teles was happy with the results, “and with the technology on the Kress, I can control the height, the mowing pattern, the time I want the robot to go. I can set everything from my phone.”
The labor opportunity
Robotic mowing presents a shift in the landscape business model. “The biggest obstacle to robotics is the resistance of companies to change procedures,” said Joe Langton. “Automation was a way for me to incentivize crews to go from three people to two people, and to focus more on the detail work that I usually couldn’t get a supervisor to focus on.”
Langton said his crews used to look at each job and say the senior guy got to sit on the mower. With his robotic crews, that supervisor is the one doing the weeding, edging and the final touch of detail. “I now incentivize the detail, and I pay those two-person crews more money and have the redundant tasks done by the automation. That was a big player for us.”
“Our company has grown with automation because we’ve been able to increase the other verticals that are very profitable in this industry by having the redundant task done by very predictable autonomous mowers,” said Langton.
“We mow 28 times during the season on a typical commercial account,” said Todd Reinhart, Reinhart Landscaping in Illinois. “If we can turn that 28 visits a season to 14 visits a season by having dedicated robot mowers on site, we think we can double the revenue per truck.” He thinks they could cut it down to just one person, “just specialized to do the high-touch activities the robots aren’t doing.”
Beyond labor efficiency, robots are helping landscape businesses find and retain new talent. “We’re getting people interested in robots, young people who don’t look at landscaping as a career,” said Reinhart. “All of a sudden, my son was running a lot of the robots and his friends started asking, ‘What is going on here? What are you doing?’ We’re starting to see that through some gamification with the robots and with marketing, we’re getting young talent and new customers.”
“The new Kress robot mower is revolutionary for us,” said Brian Cormier, of R.P. Marzilli Landscaping in Cape Cod. “Let’s be honest, labor is scarce. We can drop off robots on our properties and upgrade existing clients to more expert workers. They can grow in their careers, earn more money and stay with us. It will be very helpful for our business.”
Building owners love robots too
Each of the panelists, whether discussing battery-powered equipment or autonomous mowers, said that property owners are beginning to request non-gas-powered equipment. Most prefer the quiet of battery-powered equipment. Some want the environmental benefits. And some are finding they just love to watch robots.
“Once you deploy these dedicated robots to a site, the customers will never let those leave the site,” said Reinhart. “If you do junior highs or grade schools, they’ll name the mowers. They’ll want you to wrap them in different colors. They glue googly eyes and action figures on top of the mowers. They adopt them as people.”
