These days greener is better, wherever you look someone or something seems to be preaching the benefits of the latest eco friendly, carbon neutral gadget or gizmo that promises to change the world for the better. Sometimes they have a point, and sometimes you get the feeling that someone is just jumping on the bandwagon – solar powered fan baseball cap anyone? But whatever your thoughts on the subject, there’s no denying that until clean and renewable energy becomes the norm, green living will be seen as the holy grail we should all be striving for.
With that in mind it should come as no surprise to learn that manufacturers of gas guzzling ride on lawn mowers and lawn tractors are beginning to turn their attention to the same type of hybrid power solutions as the car industry, overkill you might think, but when you consider that using the average petrol lawnmower for an hour creates the same amount of pollution as driving for 4o miles it starts to take on more validity. When you also consider larger lawns take even longer to cut, and even more powerful mowers are used to cut them, it becomes a positively good idea.
The Raven MPV-7100 Hybrid Tractor is the flagship for such technology, and after a slightly wobbly introduction and subsequent design overhaul its creators are positive that their way is the future of lawn mowing.
The Raven Hybrid is efficient even outside of its hybrid capability, featuring a ‘belt-less’ drive train powering the cutting blades, rack and pinion steering, and ultra modern looks, this thing means business from the outset.
Digging a little deeper we find the features that make this mower really stand out from the crowd, most notably it’s electrically driven, sure it uses the power of the on-board petrol generator to charge the batteries, but you’ll still only use half the amount you would with a conventional petrol powered mower. Electrical power means that this mower is exceptionally quiet, and the large mufflers help with this even further, great news if you have noise sensitive neighbours.
Being an electrical beast means that you’ll have no trouble starting the MPV-7100 even in cold weather, and you won’t have any issues with over heating either. The brakes are also very reliable as each wheel has its own independant brake, thus the whole vehicle stops far more quickly and in a more positive, controlled fashion.
The greatest bonus of all is that this thing is also a portable generator, think about it, if it can charge those batteries then it will happily power your phone or electric hedge trimmer whilst you go about your full garden maintenance routine, very handy indeed.
So is hybrid technology the future of the lawn mower? At the rate the worlds developing economies are moving these days, and with governments keen to be seen doing the right thing as far as climate change goes, it could well be. Like it or hate it, don’t be surprised if this is the shape of things to come.
