Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've had exactly the opposite experience. I've mowed a large lawn with a Li-ion battery-powered mower for four years and I can't detect any degradation in the batteries. Maybe you already know and do this, but I'll note that some basic battery temperature management will greatly prolong their life. Don't let them bake in the sun, don't store them or charge them in a hot garage, etc.
On the other hand, all of the gas-powered mowers I've ever used, even really expensive ones, were heavy, fiddly, stinky, obnoxious things that eventually drove me to use a reel mower for a short time before I went electric.
I do still have a gas-powered machine. It's a tiller with a four-stroke engine. It's new and high-quality, and it's a fucking pain in the ass. It's hard to start, loud, smells like shit when it's running and the fuel stinks up my garage. Unfortunately there are no electric tillers, but we'll get there some day.
It was a Kobalt. I think it may have been their first battery powered model. The Honda mower will evidently need maintenance (outside of oil and air filters which I can do) at some point too, but the nice thing is Northern Tool and Equipment has a shop and they are a Honda dealer, so they can fix it and have the Honda supply chain.
Thing that sketched me out about the Kobalt is that once it fails or the battery is discontinued, you're on your own. I opened the battery up and it had 20x 4v cells but they were so tightly wired and glued that replacing all 20 would have been a pain in the ass, plus would've run around $80 for the cells.
Tillers are another beast, you don't drive them around the yard, they drive you. At least in the North Carolina clay...
Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've had exactly the opposite experience. I've mowed a large lawn with a Li-ion battery-powered mower for four years and I can't detect any degradation in the batteries. Maybe you already know and do this, but I'll note that some basic battery temperature management will greatly prolong their life. Don't let them bake in the sun, don't store them or charge them in a hot garage, etc.
On the other hand, all of the gas-powered mowers I've ever used, even really expensive ones, were heavy, fiddly, stinky, obnoxious things that eventually drove me to use a reel mower for a short time before I went electric.
I do still have a gas-powered machine. It's a tiller with a four-stroke engine. It's new and high-quality, and it's a fucking pain in the ass. It's hard to start, loud, smells like shit when it's running and the fuel stinks up my garage. Unfortunately there are no electric tillers, but we'll get there some day.