I Loved This Electric Mower Last Year, but Now...

Battery swap with the Coda - yes please! Sounds pretty intimidating, though! :D Also: why is no one taking pride in their product anymore? In my opinion Ryobi should fix the battery for free. It was obviously unfit for the promised 2 acre task!

First and foremost yes we want to see a battery swap. If your still shopping, Gravely makes a EV mower that might by worth looking at. https://www.gravely.com/en-us/power-equipment/electric/pro-turn-ev

I have several of the Ego products, and generally have been happy with them. If I was in your position, I'd be interested in their ZTR. That said, each of my Ego tools uses one interchangeable battery - even the push mower. The ZTR uses 6 of them. The upside is that you can swap out batteries and keep running. The downside is that you'd have to have another set of batteries, and they are expensive: The 52" ZTR comes with six 12AH batteries, and they are $550 . . . each. Ego does have lesser amp hour batteries, but in a high-draw application such as a ZTR I can't imagine that they would be satisfactory.

Do you have anything that uses Ego batteries or Ryobi 40v?

I would absolutely swap some of those Lithium iron phosphate batteries into the mower. It'd be like your equivalent to an engine swap, which is quite popular on YouTube. Not only that, but you'd save a TON of money and you'd get to keep the gogo sticks.

Is it weird that I knew this was going to center around the '48V' emblazoned around the mower, without knowing the battery issue? I mean, who in their right mind, in the last few years, would use 12V lead-acid batteries in a yard tool of any kind? Even deep-cycle batteries are kind of the same stripe.

Sorry about your mower. I only have a 1 acre yard, and a Toro walk-behind mower. Takes 2-3 charges of the 6Ah battery to do everything, but it's good exercise.

I feel like it'll be a tough sell (literally) to get rid of this one, especially when the batteries are already compromised. Compared to what you did trying to get the kart going, it sounds like a battery replacement on this one would be pretty simple.

There is a great thread located here: https://diysolarforum.com/threads/ryobi-zero-turn-mower-sla-to-lifepo4-conversion-updated-build-complete-with-pics.22922 of people converting their Ryobi mower to LiFePO4 batteries. There is a local blemished/damaged freight resale place here that occasionally has these for 50% of normal retail. Been thinking about snagging one for my .6 acre yard...

Check out the batteries from Signature Solar. They have a 48v LifePo that is 100ah and is waterproof or rack mountable. It might be ideal for your swap idea.

Dang, $5000 and a year of life, that is bad. On the bright side if you fix it the "how to fix your POS Ryobi batteries" video should help make up for that. Years ago I tried switching to an electric weed whacker and went through something similar. At first I tried a wired one but the cord was annoying and made it hard to get to the farther parts of the yard. Then I tried a string of battery weed whackers, but all the batteries quickly died. Most of the time after a year I would need two batteries for the yard. The replacements normally cost so much I could pick up a new weed whacker with batteries on sale for the same price as the batteries alone. Eventually I gave up and got a nice Stihl gas weed whacker and have not looked back.

I'm voting for doing the battery swap yourself to LiP. When the Drive Ryobi comes out, do you think you could test drive it? I know you don't do reviews anymore, but it'd be nice to see how it works?

"Not too pleased with that" seems like a massive understatement.