The problem with electric leaf blowers is that they're no good for people who need to blow leaves all day; and most of the leaf blowing is (in my experience) contracted out rather than done by home owners.
I have an electric blower that I use for getting leaves off my decks (you can't rake a deck and it's actually a remarkable pain in the ass to brush leaves off a deck) but if I got a contractor in to do my garden (which I don't, they just get mowed over) then they would certainly have a gas blower.
Dewalt has battery packs that are quickly interchangeable and pods with rows of batteries that can be recharged inside a car or truck while on the go. I'm hoping this becomes adopted more and more as the tech is already here.
I'm in Australia and someone near me has an electric one.
Although quieter than the gas ones, it's still far from silent and the noise is still annoying but higher pitch. Like a high-pitched vacuum cleaner noise.
Most people have the much louder gas ones though, they're the worst, and anecdotally the people operating the gas ones seem to rev them up and down more which makes it even more annoying.
Every time I hear one, I have nothing but negative thoughts about the person using them, and disgust for the society that allows them to ruin the environment for such minimal benefit.
A rake works almost silently... but then you can't irritate everyone within a kilometer radius.
