Comment by conductr
4 days ago
I’ve paid over $3000 for a lawnmower and over $1000 for a vacuum before. So I’m already halfway there and with a fraction of the benefits as a general device.
I’d need more diligence but would certainly pay $8k on a mower that did a great job consistently. A service cost me $5000 per year so it has a reasonable break even if it’s built well. Robot mowers are pretty hands on, I’d almost rather just diy it.
I feel like this is blowing smoke a bit. If this better tech was possible it would be available, there’s always a market even if it’s at the high end. Do you have anything specific to point to? Any builders/makers that have done this? I feel like this stuff gets touted as “oh if they just had affordable lidar” or whatever then it would solve it, but IRL the variety of homes and yards is so large that it still doesnt generally perform well.
Of course there's a market, it's commercial, not residential: https://scytherobotics.com/
Interesting. I'm curious if you've seen this in operation and can vouch that it actually performs exceptionally better than residential products? I ask because the marketing claims all sound very similar; vision based object avoidance, mapping, and so on. So, I am skeptical this actual does anything much better besides the mow quality itself. It looks like this is good for large mostly open spaces and it basically knocks that out while the minimal lawn crew focuses on the trimming, edges, and cleanup. All to say, it looks bigger not better from a tech perspective. I still see the value for a commercial crew.
I don't know a thing about it other than that it and others like it exist in the market today. My point is only that there's no market for a residential buyer of a $20,000 mower.