(engine humming) >>Oh my, hey, Jim, how you doing?

>>Hi, Peggy.

Doing good.

>>Wow, you've got a great new toy here.

It looks kind of old for a new toy, but it's so quiet.

>>Mm-hm.

Well, it actually is old.

It's from the 1970s, and it's quiet because it's all-electric.

>>I've never heard of an electric lawnmower before.

>>So at the time, with the backdrop of the oil crisis going on and the lines at the pumps et al, GE was in a way a little bit of a leader, and they took a risk, started up their outdoor power equipment department and started producing these all-electric garden tractors.

>>My.

>>And they ranged from a small ride-on mower only up to, this was their largest model, which could do the full garden tractor type stuff.

>>Interesting, how long will it last if I were to use this mowing my grass?

You know, how long could I use it before I had to recharge the battery?

>>You can get two or so acres out of it.

>>And how long does it take to recharge?

And being kind of old technology, does it take a long time to recharge the battery?

>>Guess that's all relative.

(Peggy laughs) With the charger that comes with it, if you were fully run down, you could plug it into a regular outlet overnight, and eight hours, 10 hours later, you were good to go.

If you're using it a lot during the day, when I used to live more out in the country, I would plug it in over lunch and give it a boost charge and go back to it after lunch and keep on going.

>>Well, I know they didn't have lithium batteries back then, so I guess these are lead-acid?

>>Right, lead-acid batteries, golf cart batteries of the time and actually still in use today in golf carts.

And they're much simpler.

You don't need all the computer control to use 'em safely like the lithium.

So it's what they had at the time, and in a garden tractor situation, unlike a car on the road, the extra weight of the lead is not such a penalty because if you're tilling or trying to plow or something, you want the weight to get traction.

>>You want some weight, yes.

Yeah, so it works out very well versus the lithiums are so light.

People don't realize that, yeah.

So, Jim, did any of the technology from yesteryear be used as a basis for what's being developed today?

>>A lot of it is totally different because these were DC motors.

Everything is AC motors now, lead-acid.

Everything's lithium now.

But the basics that you have a motor and a controller and batteries, that's been the same.

And yeah, I think that's helped lay the groundwork that somebody had to do that more basic stuff first to get us to where we are today.

>>Were any other companies involved with this, or is it just all GE?

>>GE was the main one, and maybe this gets to your other question too as to what came from their engineering.

It seemed that it possibly inspired a few other models to come out from some of the other companies at the time, ranging from John Deere had a little ride-on.

And I've heard that JC Penney also had one too, so it was coming out in different ways.

>>Oh, that's great.

Well, do you have any of those?

I'd love to see 'em.

>>I do have a couple others.

We could go take a look.

>>Okay, that sounds great.

Well, Jim, you had mentioned earlier that you used the Elec-Trak to mow this area.

So how does it handle on terrain?

>>Well, on this flat space, it does great, no problems, and it also has done well for me when I used to live more around the country and had property with a steep slope down to a little river and could mow going up and down there.

I could also put a trailer behind and bring a load of wood up with me.

>>So they're really versatile.

>>They sure are.

>>Wow, and also there's many different brands I'm seeing.

>>Right, in front here, we have one from Sears, which was the big company back then- >>Absolutely.

>>And their monster catalog.

So they briefly got into the electrics.

And like the yellow one we saw down there, General Electric had a separate line, which is basically the same thing painted industrial orange.

They marketed to factories, and you could get a forklift for it with a roll cage on top.

You could set it up to tow a bunch of carts behind it to move materials around within.

And the whole idea there is as an electric, it is no exhaust, no pollution.

>>Yes, that's very sustainable, very safe too.

And orange is for safety, so that makes sense.

>>Right.

>>Yeah.

And then this red one here from Wheel Horse?

>>Mm-hm, Wheel Horse took over the product line for the last few years, and initially they just put out the exact same thing, paint it in their color red, and then for a short while they took some of their gas models and made electric versions.

>>Let's compare electric versus gas.

How is the torque on these vehicles?

>>Oh, one of the neat thing about electric is it has full torque right when you first start going, which is great for the tractors.

It's also fun as an electric car driver that you step on, and it just starts going.

>>And it goes, yes.

(laughs) And it must be good for the attachments as well, which you had mentioned earlier that they had attachments.

>>Those big ones like the tiller on back or the snow-thrower on the front, all that torque of the motor, it can chew through a snowbank, or it can break up heavy ground.

>>Do you have some attachments here?

I'd love to see 'em.

>>Mm-hm, yeah.

(engine humming) (blade whirring) So, Peggy, they had quite a number of accessories.

I have some of them out here to show you.

>>Oh my, there's more than I thought.

>>I know.

(Peggy laughs) They go on and on.

The plow blade on the front, which was primarily marketed for snow pushing, but I've also done some small amount of dirt grading with it.

>>Right.

>>And on the back, they had a decent-sized tiller that had a lot of power to it.

>>Very ingenious, but that's what I was anticipating.

I was not anticipating everything else.

>>Mm-hm.

>>Yeah.

>>What they also did is at the time, they'd come out with a line of corded tools that you'd plug into a 110-volt outlet.

And what they did is they turned a lot of them into 36-volt versions that would run off of the tractor.

So instead of your corded drill, you, from your outlet, you would plug into the tractor.

>>Nice.

>>And you had a drill wherever you could drive your tractor.

You could also have a chainsaw that would come along with you.

And kind of a companion to that big tiller on the back was this small tiller to do just little spaces within your garden.

>>My kind of tool.

>>There you go.

>>Great little weeder, yes.

>>And this was before weed whackers were all the rage.

>>Oh, (laughs) look at that.

>>This was to trim your grass, or you could also turn it sideways and use it as an edger along your walkway.

>>Nice, very nice.

>>Also maintain your hedges with the hedge clippers.

>>How heavy are these, though?

Eh, they're made of metal.

They're a decent weight, yes.

>>Right.

These days, cordless everything is kind of taking the place, but it's pretty much the same technology, but with a battery built in versus a giant battery.

>>Exactly.

I think that's just wonderful, and you don't even have to have the tractor run.

It's all- >>Right, it's all silent.

And it was a little less common, they also had an inverter, which you could connect to it, and that would give you 120-volt power if you wanted to plug in something that wasn't specially made.

>>Oh wow, they really did think of everything.

And I'm really impressed, and I still don't know why this didn't catch on, you know, 'cause what a package.

>>Right, it's just is one of those things with the timing.

The oil crisis wound down, and I think they just maybe tried to do too much all at once.

>>Yes.

Jim, I notice you drive an electric car and also that you have a lot of hobbies dealing with electricity, so tell us about that.

>>Well, in a way, like GE, I was a little bit ahead of the curve and started getting into electric cars, first, electric bicycles, then electric cars, before they were commercially available.

And there was a little bit of an underground group of people who would talk on the internet, and we would do our own conversions.

So I had a converted electric pickup truck was the first electric on-road vehicle I had.

And then the garden tractor was the first electric that way.

>>You've managed to take all of this old technology and put it into a store, The Electric Tractor Store.

>>Well, I guess I've always liked all things electric, and specific to these tractors is there are a bunch of them out there still and would like to see them in use and not get hauled off to the landfill or the scrap yard.

So I wanna make people aware that they can bring these back and also just generally educate people that this electric technology is applicable to yard care on up to farm-size care.

>>Yeah, that is so pertinent to this day where we're all trying to be sustainable.

We're all trying to recycle what has been used in the past and how we can move forward with it.

So you are spot-on, and I appreciate it.

Thank you.

>>Sure, you're welcome.

>>I had no idea that you were just such an electric guy.

(Peggy and Jim laugh)