This week I gave away my old Lawn Mower and pushed my way through my yard for the first time with a 20" cordless electric lawn mower, a 24V one made by Earthwise (I've heard it is the same as the HomeLite one sold at Home Depot that did well in Consumer Reports tests).  Why did I make the switch?   For starters, my old gas one was getting tired, as in the more I used it, the less likely I would be able to start it again if I got interrupted or was bagging my grass.  The other reason is that those little gas engines pump out a lot of pollution.  The EPA found that "operating a typical gasoline-powered lawn mower for one hour produces the same amount of smog-forming hydrocarbons as driving an average car almost 200 miles under typical driving conditions!"

For more inconvenient facts see:
http://www.epa.gov/air/community/details/yardequip_addl_info.html

As some of you might be thinking, electric mowers aren't pollution free, that power still gets generated somewhere, but more efficiently than a small gasoline engine!  
When solar kits come down a little more in price, the ideal matchup would be to charge the lawn mower using solar panels!   Until that time comes, you can contact your energy company and ask to participate in alternate energy options like wind.  Here in Minnesota Xcel energy has the Windsource program.  Its a relatively inexpensive way to encourage the expansion of low pollution options like Wind for power needs.

Now, on to my experience:
I don't have a huge yard, but I don't think its tiny either; with my old self-propelled mower it took me about 50 minutes to mow the lawn.  The battery life on the Earthwise is between 45 minutes and an hour.  However, after mowing my lawn, Only 1 of 5 LED charge indicators went dark!  I'll guess that the first-time performance will change over time, but it eased my concerns about running of juice half way through my lawn job.  Generally it was not too hard too push, a little easier than the 6.5HP Craftsman it replaced.  What I really liked was being able to stop and start quickly and easily (with the key in you just pull a lever to turn it on and release to turn it off) to pick up toys and other debris I missed.  The bag was a little disappointing.  I bag the grass in my back yard and I had to basically pull the grass out, perhaps the opening is too small.

Finally, when I was all done I didn't smell like a gas station: excellent!