Battery vs Gas Snow Blower: Cost, Runtime and Cold Weather

Choose battery if:

• Your driveway is one to three cars, or a single lane up to about 250 feet.
• You hate pull cords, fuel cans and carburetors that gum up over summer.
• You clear early in the morning and neighbors are close.
• You already own EGO 56V tools, which makes the tool-only EGO SNT2420 ($1,199.00) a cheaper entry.

Choose gas if:

• You want the lowest price for two-stage capacity; the WEN SB209E is $493.77.
• You clear a very long driveway, a shared private lane or neighbors' drives in the same session.
• Your storms are routinely heavy and wet, where battery runtime shrinks.
• You want track drive, which in our catalog means gas, such as the Honda HSS928AATD.

EGO rates its machines by driveway size: 10 cars of 8-inch snow for the SNT2122 on two 4.0Ah batteries, 18 cars for the SNT2405 on two 7.5Ah batteries, 24 cars for the SNT2410 with two 10.0Ah batteries, and 32 cars for the SNT2807 on two 12.0Ah batteries. Treat those as best-case figures. Wet snow, a deep plow berm and cold batteries all cut the real number, sometimes by a lot.

Even at half the rating, most homes are covered. A 22 by 30-foot two-car driveway takes about 8 minutes of moderate snow with a 24-inch machine, and a 12 by 250-foot single lane about 19 minutes. If your job regularly runs past 45 minutes of heavy snow, gas is the safer choice. The snow clearing time calculator gives your number.

They work, but lithium-ion batteries deliver less capacity when cold. The practical fix is simple and comes straight from the manuals: store and charge batteries indoors at room temperature, and install them just before you head out. Greenworks' listing for its 80V 20-inch blower even advises warming a cold battery indoors for 10 minutes if the unit will not start.

Gas has its own cold problem. Recoil-start engines get hard to pull in deep cold, which is why electric start matters. Poulan Pro rates its 99cc single-stage to start at -22 F, and Honda uses an automotive-style DC electric key start. Neither fuel type is immune to cold; each needs a different habit.

For typical residential use, gas usually does. A season of short driveway clearings burns a modest amount of fuel, and an annual oil change, fuel stabilizer, a spark plug and a few shear bolts are small line items. Those running costs are unlikely to close a purchase gap of about $750 within 5 years unless you use the machine heavily. A battery machine uses very little electricity, but its batteries are the expensive consumable: EGO's warranty on its single-stage kit covers batteries for 3 years, and replacement packs are not cheap.

The better way to think about it: a battery snow blower is a convenience purchase, not a savings purchase. You are paying to eliminate fuel storage, cold pull-starts, engine exhaust and spring carburetor trouble. For many older homeowners, that is well worth it. For a budget buyer with a gravel drive, a gas two-stage is the rational choice. The battery snow blower buying guide covers battery sizing.