10 ms·
California bans the sale of all small off-road internal combustion engines
- kbos87 5y agoElectric lawnmowers and leafblowers have come such a long way. My electric lawnmower weighs next to nothing, needs virtually no maintenance, and it is only about as loud as a box fan. I get 2-3 mows out of it on a single charge, and the upfront cost was on par with (if not a little less than) an ICE lawnmower. There is no reason to not move aggressively in this direction.
- maxerickson 5y agoImposing the same rule on small backup generators seems premature, but that might be my perspective, where losing power for an extended period during the winter here would be bad (not that I have a generator, there's just not anything that I see as a particularly viable alternative, especially dollar for dollar).
- RickJWagner 5y ago"Battery-powered yard care tools typically costs $100 to $250 more costly than comparable gasoline and diesel fueled equipment." I've hesitated to buy battery powered lawn equipment because consumer reviews seem to suggest the batteries last for 4 or 5 seasons, then go bad. The batteries cost a significant fraction of what the whole system costs, so you end up buying a new lawn gadget and throwing away the entire old one (bad battery and all). I think the law is short-sighted.
- simonblack 5y agoGoodbye Briggs and Stratton
- jimmaswell 5y agoAnother reason I'm glad not to live there. I like electric but this is impractically draconian.
- 10x-dev 5y agoWhat's impractical about it?
- smileysteve 5y agoI had an ac electric blower growing up in the 90s.
- unclebucknasty 5y ago"What? I can't buy a gas-powered leaf blower there? I mean, I prefer electric, but, but...why those draconian, anti-freedom Stalinists!" These "I hate California" digs are cartoonish by now (and boring).
- version_five 5y agoI wouldn't have supported this a few years ago, but working from home now and surrounded by people operating 2-stroke leaf blowers all day, I'd be pretty happy never to hear one again. It would be better to regulate noise and / or emissions vs the specific technology, but that's probably too much to ask.
- tenken 5y ago... doesn't the battery powered still use the same basic engine for a leaf blower... ? Won't it still generate noise. https://youtu.be/f5N30Q1qTaE https://youtu.be/f5N30Q1qTaE Seems to me it's outside your door/sidewalk it's still a lot of noise
- rayrrr 5y agoNo. Battery powered does not have an engine, it only has a motor. The engine in a gas-powered device is where the combustion happens, and that combustion causes much louder noise than an electric motor. Same as the sound of an electric car vs. gas-powered.
- chrisseaton 5y agoHave these people never heard of rakes? Where I live you can't really leaf-blow anyway, as the leaves are almost always wet and heavy.
- sokoloff 5y agoTry getting maple seeds (the helicopters) or pine needles off 2-8 week old grass seedlings with a rake (to prevent the grass seedlings from being smothered). Gas blowers make light work of heavy, wet leaves. It’s why the landscapers use them rather than electrics.
- kriskrunch 5y agoElectric leaf blowers are much quieter from my experience. The gas powered motor itself generates a lot of the noise. Making them illegal didn't seem to help in LA where the gardeners still defiantly use the gas powered blowers with zero repercussions. Hopefully you'll have better success outlawing them in your community.
- TedShiller 5y agoFor all the people operating generators outside, can't those still be bought out of state and then brought to CA?
- dredmorbius 5y agoThe Heartland Institute, according to the Institute's web site, is a nonprofit "think tank" that questions the reality and import of climate change, second-hand smoke health hazards, and a host of other issues that might seem to require government regulation. Heartland Institute is an "associate member" of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing “think tanks” and tax-exempt organizations in 49 states, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., Canada, and the United Kingdom. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Instit...
- bjt2n3904 5y ago> Proponents of the law users of electric power equipment will save money over time because the amount of electricity used to charge the batteries or power the equipment is cheaper than the cost of fossil fuels for comparable usages. ...if that was truly the case, then wouldn't battery powered equipment have won the market already? The fact of the matter is I have battery powered lawn equipment. It barely can handle my 1/4 acre yard before giving out. Recharging the batteries takes hours, and the batteries love to flake out and refuse to charge. If I was a lawn care company, I'd be livid.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> if that was truly the case, then wouldn't battery powered equipment have won the market already? That's always the risk of arguing that it's in people's interests to already be doing something!
- Tronno 5y agoPlug-in gardening equiment also exists, along with extension cords that should work with a yard of that size.
- bjt2n3904 5y agoMy grandmother's townhouse had a 6 x 8' strip of grass to mow, and had a plug in mower. It worked great. I'm all for picking the tools that work best for your situation. But don't say, "And I hereby decree that everyone will now use this technology."
- bombcar 5y agoFor something that small even a simple push unpowered mower would work.
- tialaramex 5y agoBut they didn't decree that "everybody will now use this technology". They just outlawed something harmful. You're quite free to hire a goat, use a rake, plenty of options.
- adriand 5y ago“To equal the hydrocarbon emissions of about a half-hour of yard work with this two-stroke leaf blower, you'd have to drive a Ford Raptor for 3,887 miles, or the distance from Northern Texas to Anchorage, Alaska.” https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/emissions-test-car-vs-truck-vs-leaf-blower.html https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/emissions-test-...
- alphabettsy 5y agoWhile not terrible, that doesn't seem favorable for the gas leaf-blower. Most people use yard equipment once a week or more for that long during depending on season. So using a leaf-blower for 30 mins once a week for 12 weeks has the same emissions as driving a extremely inefficient truck for 45k miles?
- plorkyeran 5y agoWhat about that is not terrible?
- lovecg 5y agoNote that this is true in terms of various pollutants, but importantly not CO2.
- mjfl 5y agoI find this hard to believe. I remember mowing the lawn for my parents, powering my ridealong lawn mower with a few gallons of gas for an hour or two (or maybe 30 minutes, I don't remember how long it took me). My car, at best, would drive for an hour on a few gallons of gas. So about the same amount of time. What gives?
- p1mrx 5y agoThey shouldn't ban generators in particular, because those enable people to buy all the other electric devices regardless of whether the power grid is reliable.
- nemo44x 5y agoEveryone just buys them out of state. There’s literally an entire market for it now. And since most the people using them are immigrants no one is going to seriously back a law banning them from use unless they want to be a named racist. It’s all just a show.
- dd36 5y agoThe electric ones are great.
- nemo44x 5y agoI was talking to my landscaper recently about them. Said they’ve improved but still not as good as an ICE. And they work on efficiency. I assume he knows what he’s talking about as every landscaper near me uses gas. If electric was a better option I assume they’d use them.
- dd36 5y agoGas is easier than maintaining an array of charged batteries.
- hourislate 5y agoTheater for the masses, none of it matters....
- grecy 5y ago"People are circumventing a law that attempts to protect the environment, therefore we shouldn't even bother". Yes, of course people will always look for ways around a law.. but if even 50% can't be bothered to go around it, that will be an enormous reduction in emissions.
- nemo44x 5y agoBut look at zoning in CA and the infinite logjam of traffic on the highways. I hardly doubt leaf blowers make anywhere near a dent policies that a really affect people’s lives would. It’s a joke really.
- hooloovoo_zoo 5y agoThis is a good start to reducing noise pollution. Motorcycles and mustangs next.
- timbit42 5y agoMotorcycles and Mustangs with stock mufflers aren't very loud. I'd recommend banning aftermarket mufflers.
- quwert95 5y agoMy father is a licensed landscape contractor in Menlo Park (the same place where this law change was written). For 30 years I have watched (and helped) him with jobs almost always involving small off-road internal combustion tools. He works 6 day work weeks and easily 10h+ a day. His small truck fleet not only includes lawn mowers, blowers, and edge cutters, but also a trencher, a compactor, and a couple pumps. As well intentioned as this law change is it will only make a hard job even harder. Battery cost, battery swaps and reparability, battery theft, arguing with locals who still will still yell at him for being "too loud".... it's just not going to happen or be worth it. He will continue to buy tools from places with lower sales tax and there is no possible way you can argue that an electric trencher or compactor is going to work for more than a couple hours a day without a repeated battery swaps. Have you even seen how large the properties are in Woodside, Atherton, Portola Valley, Palo Alto, and Cupertino? Those kinds of jobs are impossible with electric tools. Sorry, not sorry.
- nradov 5y agoI sympathize with the landscape contractors, but the type of landscaping that requires small engines to maintain isn't really needed. I grew up in a rural house with no decorative landscaping, just weeds and trees. When leaves fell off the trees we left them there. It was fine.
- jacobolus 5y agoOne thing you might point out to your father is that his choice of dirty obsolete technology is exposing himself and his workers to dangerous levels of carcinogenic crap all day long, taking years off their lives. Not to mention the hearing loss. If he wants to keep using them he should at the least be requiring his employees to wear high quality gas masks and hearing protection. Otherwise, the health effects are comparable to mandating all of his employees take up smoking cigarettes while on the job. If individual home owners want to take a risk with their lives while doing occasional lawn care that is one thing, but this kind of unnecessary occupational hazard should be strictly banned, and should open employers to criminal/financial liability.
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
- goodpoint 5y agoArbitrarily banning sales of such items sounds suspicious. If it's about pollution, the *use* of highly polluting things should be made illegal, including many cars and SUVs. If it's about noise, ban the *use* of noisy things, including leaf blowers, motorbikes and so on. How comes existing ICE vehicles get a pass?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- unclebucknasty 5y agoIt's not as if they've done nothing on the ICE front--e.g. catalytic converters and zero-emission vehicle tax credits. This really seems like just another step, with likely more to follow.
- LesZedCB 5y agothey are unnecessary excess. guess what, ya don't need a goddamned cut grass lawn. we are putting in ponds and forest gardens starting next year. no more yard. downvote away, but these are exactly the kind of austerity measures required to get used to (and MUCH MUCH more) in order to realistically get things on track.
- bombcar 5y agoAmusingly enough many cities and most HOAs in California will get very angry and even fine you if your yard isn’t a lawn to match everyone else’s.
- wly_cdgr 5y agoThis is so ham-fisted and out of touch and politically stupid. The way to achieve things like this is to finance superior alternatives so that the undesired technology is naturally, organically abandoned
- unclebucknasty 5y agoAnd awaken the "government shouldn't have been involved in funding stuff like Solyndra" crowd.
- ethagknight 5y agoI’m glad California is doing this. I don’t live in Cali so I don’t have to endure the initial scramble of figuring out compliance. I hate yard equipment gas engines. With a fiery burning passion. Most comments below think it’s either gas or battery, but plug-in equipment is great. Much quieter, more powerful than battery, cable management is kinda annoying but there’s an art to it. Commercial equipment is a tough deal though, you can’t get enough amps on a 300 ft extension cord for a commercial-quality powered motor, which makes me wonder if this legislation could push foreword innovation to, maybe, create higher-grade plug in equipment that either utilizes a flywheel to increase cutting power at the expense of torque, or uses a combo battery and cord to temporarily boost power as needed.
- Gibbon1 5y agoThing to remember is the article linked is basically a propaganda outfit. They claim a lot of thing but don't link to the law itself. The law is basically enabling legislation that requires the state air resources board to develop regulations and a system of rebates and incentives for commercial users to transition to zero emissions equipment. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1346 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
- bombcar 5y agoThey missed a real good chance to instead just tax them - start at a modest tax that increases rapidly and everyone will stop buying them eventually.
- timbit42 5y agoDoesn't California have a carbon tax?
- dang 5y agoRecent and related: Gasoline-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers to be banned under new California law - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830968 - Oct 2021 (25 comments) California moves toward ban on gas lawnmowers and leaf blowers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28819696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28819696 - Oct 2021 (147 comments)
- trailbits 5y agoI'm happy to see California do this and hope other states wise up to the damage being done by these pollution machines. Drives me bonkers every week as neighbors and their landscapers fire up gas powered leaf blowers, edge trimmers and lawnmowers. Not only are they polluting the air and creating a noise nuisance, but for most yards they are using up a valuable energy resource for a task better suited for hand or electric tools. Think of how much more enjoyable yard work would be if you didn't have to listen to the deafening roar of everyone's internal combustion engines all the time. Rakes, push mowers and pruning shears aren't that much more effort - and most of us could use the extra exercise. If I charged these landscapers for all my lost productive time due to their noise and the impacts on my health from all the dust/noise/air pollution, an investment in batteries or extension cords looks pretty cheap.
- 111111111111 5y agoWhy not just make an incremental step like banning two stroke leaf blowers. I don't understand. Is consistent incremental progress too complicated for the big brain law makers?