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Robot ou humain ?

Commercial mowing

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

Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits. Méthodologie · Bilan des prévisions

Humain · Par an28 400 $USCrew on a ride-on
Robot · Par an40 379 $USLease an autonomous mower
Délai de retour sur investissementjamais
Année de basculepas d’ici 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.

États-Unis · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

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Charge de travail
Hypothèse

Acres mowed per working day across your sites.

Hypothèse

Hours per day the mower may run.

Hypothèse

Working days per month.

Hypothèse

Mowing months per year.

Personnel
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).

Hypothèse

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

Hypothèse

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

Robot
Hypothèse

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).

Hypothèse

Site mapping and crew training.

Hypothèse

Lease term in years.

Hypothèse

Availability.

Hypothèse

Work lost to faults.

Hypothèse

Trimming, slopes and obstacles a person still handles.

Hypothèse

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

Hypothèse

kWh per robot-hour.

Hypothèse

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

Finances
Hypothèse

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

Hypothèse

Years in the NPV comparison.

Hypothèse

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

Hypothèse

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

Hypothèse

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)

Résultats

OptionPar moisPar anPer unit (acre)Coût initialDélai de retour sur investissementBreak-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
Humain Crew on a ride-on Référence 2 367 $US28 400 $US13,45 $US— — — —
Robot Lease an autonomous mower 3 365 $US40 379 $US19,12 $US1 000 $US jamais 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 $UShigh value: 1 → -30 840 $USSupervisionlow value: 10 → -22 433 $UShigh value: 60 → -135 369 $USWorkloadlow value: 5 → -71 126 $UShigh value: 40 → -118 142 $USHuman equipment cost per hourlow value: 0 → -45 020 $UShigh value: 15 → 856 $USHuman output per hourlow value: 1.2 → -103 957 $UShigh value: 3 → -59 938 $USActive months per yearlow value: 6 → -56 208 $UShigh value: 11 → -28 237 $USLease per robot per monthlow value: 1800 → -45 020 $UShigh value: 2200 → -64 747 $USHourly wagelow value: 15.056000000000001 → -54 389 $UShigh value: 22.584 → -35 651 $USWork that stays humanlow value: 0.1 → -36 069 $UShigh value: 0.4 → -53 970 $US-45 020 $US0low 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. Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits.

ChartCoût humain par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès rapide), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès lent). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/commercial-mowing/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.0,00 $US5,00 $US10,00 $US15,00 $US20,00 $US2026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / acrescenario rangeCoût humain par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/commercial-mowing/). Modelled estimat…

Année de bascule: pas d’ici 2035

What the spreadsheet misses

Sécurité
Mower injuries and heat stress are real; a robot takes the operator off the seat.
Qualité
Consistent stripes; trimming still manual.
Flexibilité
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.
Réglementation
Check local rules for unattended machines in public spaces.

Voir aussi

Sources de cette page

Les notes et les sources sont en anglais ; la version anglaise fait foi.

  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