Can't see how they are doing them for £99 a month. Has to be a long term hire thing, or most likely someone wrote month rather than week.
It's still no use for anything but basement excavations or indoors work. As for more reliable- the Kubota diesel engine in them never goes wrong, and the rest of the machine will be the same! Imagine having to take it back to the yard and plug it in, or run a lead out overnight on site, rather than just put five litres of DERV in? Heck no.
Electric works for forklifts because they are often used indoors, and always parked up in the warehouse overnight next to the charger, plus they can have a huge weight of batteries as it's useful (counterweight) It works for some electric cars because again, they return to base with a charger (parked at home), and the 'job' (ie. driving 140 miles) would normally take half a day and use ten litres of diesel otherwise. It simply doesn't work for site machinery except in very limited circumstances that require zero emmisions. Ten litres of diesel is gone in three hours in a 2.7t machine and it's still got to operate the rest of the day whilst having less space for batteries than a Nissan Leaf!
non starter, everyone with a brain can see it but idiot greenies still keep pushing it, whilst simultaneously refusing the only thing that can provide enough power for it- nuclear.