whirrwork
🌐 Traducción automática. El original en inglés es la fuente y puede ser más preciso. Leer en inglés →

¿Robot o humano?

Commercial mowing

Crew member on a commercial ride-on mower vs Autonomous commercial mower (lease)

Estimaciones modeladas por Whirrwork, no hechos. Metodología · Historial de aciertos

Humano · Al año28.400 US$Crew on a ride-on
Robot · Al año40.379 US$Lease an autonomous mower
Plazo de recuperaciónnunca
Año de cruceno antes de 2035Base-case year (earliest to latest across scenarios)

On these numbers people are clearly cheaper. Even running flat out, one robot would not displace enough work to pay for itself.

Estados Unidos · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

Haz tus propios cálculos

Change anything. Results update as you type and stay in your browser; nothing is stored or sent. Works offline after your first visit.

Carga de trabajo
Supuesto

Acres mowed per working day across your sites.

Supuesto

Hours per day the mower may run.

Supuesto

Working days per month.

Supuesto

Mowing months per year.

Personal
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS OEWS May 2025 national median hourly wage, SOC 37-3011.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Wages and salaries were 70.0% of total employer compensation cost for private industry workers in June 2026 (ECEC), so total cost = wage / 0.70.

ilostat.ilo.org

Nominal 4.4% a year, 2015-2025 (ILOSTAT hourly earnings).

Supuesto

Acres per hour for an experienced operator on a commercial zero-turn mower.

Supuesto

Your mower's fuel and ownership cost per hour. Default 0 ignores it.

Robot
Supuesto

Autonomous mower acres per hour relative to a person.

Scythe Robotics

Scythe M.52 Standard lease from $1,800/month (includes 40 autonomous acres; more acres cost more).

Supuesto

Site mapping and crew training.

Supuesto

Lease term in years.

Supuesto

Availability.

Supuesto

Work lost to faults.

Supuesto

Trimming, slopes and obstacles a person still handles.

Supuesto

Crew minutes per robot-hour: transport, supervision while it mows nearby.

Supuesto

kWh per robot-hour.

Supuesto

Electricity price per kWh (USD). Check your bill; energy is rarely a big line.

Finanzas
Supuesto

Annual financing / discount rate. Nobody publishes yours; 8% is a round mid-2026 commercial borrowing guess.

Supuesto

Years in the NPV comparison.

Supuesto

Share of a human service price that is labour (rises with wages). Used to escalate and to adjust US service prices to other countries.

Supuesto

Share of a robot service price that is labour (pilot, technician). The rest is equipment, which learning curves make cheaper.

Supuesto

Share of a lease or RaaS fee that pays for hardware (learns down). The rest is service and support (moves with wages).

Download these results (CSV)

Resultados

OpciónAl mesAl añoPer unit (acre)Inversión inicialPlazo de recuperaciónBreak-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
Humano Crew on a ride-on Referencia 2367 US$28.400 US$13,45 US$— — — —
Robot Lease an autonomous mower 3365 US$40.379 US$19,12 US$1000 US$ nunca not reachable
Utilisation 76 %
 -45.020 US$

What moves the answer most

Each bar shows the 5-year NPV of the best robot option when one input moves to the low or high end of its range, with the rest held at your values.

5-year NPV vs baseline: Lease an autonomous mower5-year NPV vs baseline: Lease an autonomous mowerRobot output vs a personlow value: 0.5 → -152.700 US$high value: 1 → -30.840 US$Supervisionlow value: 10 → -22.433 US$high value: 60 → -135.369 US$Workloadlow value: 5 → -71.126 US$high value: 40 → -118.142 US$Human equipment cost per hourlow value: 0 → -45.020 US$high value: 15 → 856 US$Human output per hourlow value: 1.2 → -103.957 US$high value: 3 → -59.938 US$Active months per yearlow value: 6 → -56.208 US$high value: 11 → -28.237 US$Lease per robot per monthlow value: 1800 → -45.020 US$high value: 2200 → -64.747 US$Hourly wagelow value: 15.056000000000001 → -54.389 US$high value: 22.584 → -35.651 US$Work that stays humanlow value: 0.1 → -36.069 US$high value: 0.4 → -53.970 US$-45.020 US$0low valuehigh valueSource: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/commercial-mowing/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.

Cost per unit to 2035

Real terms (today's money). Robot hardware follows Wright's law; wages follow each country's history. Shaded band: robots-slow to robots-fast scenarios. Estimaciones modeladas por Whirrwork, no hechos.

ChartCosto humano por unidad (Base), Costo del robot por unidad (Base), Costo del robot por unidad (Robots: avance rápido), Costo del robot por unidad (Robots: avance lento). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/commercial-mowing/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.0,00 US$5,00 US$10,00 US$15,00 US$20,00 US$2026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / acrescenario rangeCosto humano por unidad (Base)Costo del robot por unidad (Base)Costo del robot por unidad (Robot…Costo del robot por unidad (Robot…Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/commercial-mowing/). Modelled estimat…

Año de cruce: no antes de 2035

What the spreadsheet misses

Seguridad
Mower injuries and heat stress are real; a robot takes the operator off the seat.
Calidad
Consistent stripes; trimming still manual.
Flexibilidad
Crews move between sites fast; robots need transport and maps.
Edge cases
Public parks with people and dogs need supervision.
Customer experience
Quiet electric mowers allow early or late work.
Jobs and redeployment
Crews shift to trimming, planting and supervision; labour shortages are the usual driver.
Regulación
Check local rules for unattended machines in public spaces.

Relacionado

Fuentes de esta página

Las notas y las fuentes están en inglés; la versión en inglés es la de referencia.

  1. Scythe M.52 autonomous commercial mower lease from $1,800/month (Standard, incl. 40 autonomous acres) Scythe Robotics, 2026-10 · vendor
  2. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (median hourly wage by occupation) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025-05
  3. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026: wages and salaries 70.0% of private-industry compensation (series CMU2020000000000P) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-06
  4. Mean nominal hourly earnings of employees by sex and occupation (ISCO-08), DF_EAR_EHRA_SEX_OCU_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), from national labour force and earnings surveys, 2025
  5. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev): Germany 2022-2025, total labour cost vs wages and salaries per hour Eurostat, 2025
  6. Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026 (employer Class 1 NIC 15% above £5,000) HM Revenue & Customs, 2025-04-06
  7. 令和6年賃金構造基本統計調査 (Basic Survey on Wage Structure 2024), table 1 by occupation Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (via e-Stat), 2024-06
  8. Average monthly earnings of employees by sex and economic activity, DF_EAR_EMTA_SEX_ECO_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), 2022
  9. Average annual wage of employed persons in urban units in 2024 (by position and by region) National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2025-05-20
  10. Euro foreign exchange reference rates (cross rates to USD), via Frankfurter European Central Bank, 2026-10-23
  11. Wright, T. P. (1936). Factors affecting the cost of airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 3(4), 122-128 Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 1936
  12. Nagy, B., Farmer, J. D., Bui, Q. M., & Trancik, J. E. (2013). Statistical basis for predicting technological progress. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e52669 (62 technologies; Wright's law among the best hindcasters; errors grow with horizon) PLoS ONE, 2013