EcoFlow debuts Blade, a wild-looking robotic mower, shows a fancy portable fridge, and more
EcoFlow debuts Blade, a wild-looking robotic mower, shows a fancy portable fridge, and more
It also showed off its home backup battery kit
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Mini techno-tractor
🤖 EcoFlow Blade is a robotic mower that can collect leaves for you
👍 The Blade requires no boundary wire, can set lawn borders virtually instead
☃️ EcoFlow Glacier is a fancy cooler that refrigerates and makes ice
🌬️ EcoFlow Wave 2 portable air conditioner heats and cools with 8hr battery
🏠 Whole-home backup battery can power a house for up to a week
💰 The backup battery isn’t cheap, but it’s not as pricey as Tesla Powerwall
EcoFlow, a California-based company that until now has largely produced battery-driven power stations (think a generator but it runs on batteries instead of combustible fuel) is expanding its lineup. At CES 2023, it showcased a whole home backup battery solution, a robotic lawnmower that gathers leaves, a battery-powered portable fridge, and the new EcoFlow Wave 2, a successor to its first battery-powered air conditioner.
EcoFlow Blade
EcoFlow also introduced the Blade, a wild-looking robotic mower designed not just to clip your grass but to collect leaves for you. The Blade looks like a futuristic RC car take on a John Deer tractor (in fact, it actually offers manual control via the app, as spotted in this YouTube video from the show), with an automatic raising-and-lowering cowl that presumably contains the mower blade. The front wheels are permanently turned-in, rolling seemingly only to help it turn, and their bizarre design makes me wonder if they serve another purpose besides rolling and turning the mower.
EcoFlow says you won’t need to put up boundary wires, as it can have boundaries set virtually. It can climb and avoid obstacles, and is equipped with anti-theft measures, including an LTE radio, interestingly enough. The Blade is due out in spring 2023, but no pricing has been announced.
EcoFlow Glacier
The EcoFlow Glacier looks like the world’s fanciest cooler. It’s a portable fridge and freezer combo capable of making 18 ice cups in about 12 minutes. It can be charged with solar panels, features up to 24 hours of operation, and has app connectivity, presumably for adjusting the internal temperature or checking battery life, though I’ve asked EcoFlow to confirm. No price was announced, but it should be here in the spring of this year.
EcoFlow Wave 2
EcoFlow announced the Wave 2 on January 5 as well – this is a portable air conditioner capable of both cooling and heating, has up to 8 hours of runtime on a charge (when you buy an add-on battery), and can be powered five different ways (EcoFlow doesn’t specify the ways). It’s due in summer 2023, and although the company didn’t announce pricing, the $1,499.00 price of the original Wave gives us an idea.
EcoFlow Whole-home Backup Power Solution
The name isn’t as catchy as Powerwall, but the EcoFlow Whole-home Backup Power Solution is a modular take on Tesla’s home backup battery, and it’s built on the back of the company’s EcoFlow Delta Pro 3.6KWh battery power station.
The three kits on offer range from a single Delta Pro to a kit decked out with two Delta Pros, four backup batteries to power them and EcoFlow Smart Home Panel – basically a WiFi-connected, app-controllable relay panel that connects to your existing circuit breaker.
Pricing ranges from $3,699 for the Starter Kit to almost $20,000 for the highest-priced version of the Smart Control Kit. For perspective, the Tesla Powerwall starts between $10,000 and $20,000, and a single battery can get up to a day at most.