My Other Vehicle Is...A Solar Robot Mower

A meadow might be preferable to a maintenance-requiring lawn, and a front-yard food garden would be even better. But if the lawn is there to stay, Swedish Husqvarna's new robot mower combines a battery-powered (NiMH) no-hands mowing system with solar booster panels that help the mower extends its charge time. If you buy green electricity, you've got pretty low-emissions' mowing. The Automower Solar Hybrid's charge lasts about an hour in sunny weather, less under clouds - the machine senses when its charge is low and automatically rolls back to the charging station.

TreeHugger supports technologies which might convince the mow-happy to trade in their two-stroke and gas-powered tractor mowers. Automower Solar Hybrid uses bumper wire cables to help define a lawn section of up to 20,000 square feet (it mows around 900 square feet per hour or charge). Husqvarna says Automower handles slopes of up to 35%. The solar hybrid model is supposed to use the same amount of energy as a 40 watt light bulb (incandescent, unfortunately) and be 90 percent recyclable. Pretty pricey at around US$4,000. Via ::Automower.com