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Comment by jonnycowboy | Hacker News Reader

At a 1,000$ pricepoint I'm not so sure it will be good enough for the masses, especially for such a standard powered longboard setup. Longboards can be found for 100$, add two 50$ brushless motors, a belt-drive setup and a controller, I don't think they can justify that profit margin. I'd expect that with a BMW StreetCarver truck setup, it would be a much easier sell (in fact I would probably buy one). With regards to the product design, I think you'll find the unsupported belt pulley to cause motor failure in normal use (these type of brushless motors are not designed for sideloading, even with dual ball bearings).

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We're starting with a longboard setup that costs over $300 retail. The reason those sell is because they have lots of advantages over $100 longboards.

We are still refining our transmission design, but even in its current form, we haven't had a bearing issue or motor failure in the past year of continuous and rigorous testing.

I've tended to find the $300+ price tags on Loaded boards to be a bit high, but they are head and shoulders much better than anything you can find for $100. This is really exciting to see a motorized version of an actual good longboard.

Like all technology it will get cheaper. Even now it seems empirically to be a good deal if you can afford it, judging from the reactions of the three YC partners that bought one.

I'd like to add, I love the controller design. That alone must be worth a couple of hundred ;) Does it use bluetooth? I hope it is not a standard RC transmitter because they can get jammed fairly easily (leading to injury and death, etc etc) even on the new(ish) frequency-hopping 2.4Ghz models.

PS. are you hiring ? ;)

>they can get jammed fairly easily (leading to injury and death, etc etc)

Wouldn't a failsafe that activated the brakes if contact with the remote were lost pretty much avoid any serious problems? I don't think getting rear-ended should be much of a concern, since the maximum speed is 20 MPH, and cars will (hopefully) be careful behind someone on a skateboard in general.

Sudden deceleration (or acceleration) is probably the last thing you want if the remote disconnects. I'd guess some audible alarm letting you know the remote is no longer functioning + disconnecting the drive system (motors and brakes) so it functions as a regular skateboard would be the safest way to handle that issue.

That might be less than ideal if you were going downhill. Or if you had accelerated to maximum speed, were heading toward an intersection, and planned to hit the brakes before you got there.

I speak from (literally) painful experience. You do not want to have a board decelerating under you, especially when going down hill. If you do not have a decent foot braking technique, you should not ride longboards downhill. Foot braking is (IMO) the most difficult part of longboarding and very easy to screw up, sometimes it's better to try to stay on the board than even attempt braking.

A very slow brake application might be fine, but there has to be an alarm to the rider before that.

Longboards are very dangerous. Usually it's fear and inadequate kicking technique that keeps you from going too fast. I hope that people riding these boards will learn breaking do not rely solely on the engines.

Perhaps it also has a weight switch - no weight detected on the board for a second or two and it powers down?

Take a deep breath, step back, and read what you wrote.

That's like saying, who would ever buy a MacBook Pro?

Why, just can just buy a motherboard, a block of aluminium, some commodity chips.

Just break out the vertical mill and soldering iron and spend a few weekends on it.

Why spend $1300 on $500 of components?

As far as the profit margin, one barrier to just building this yourself is the NRE for a suitable brushless motor controller that does speed control, handles unknown and varying load torque, and does motor braking. Or do you know of an existing alternative controller?

They are using off-the-shelf brushless motor controllers (from what I can gather) and off-the-shelf brushless motors. There are many makers of ESCs with your requirements including from the now-ubiquitous HobbyKing, both sensored and sensorless (for RC car applications) including this one: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__17234__Hobby_King... which will do variable engine braking as well.

Our motor control ESCs, remote control electronics, battery management systems, and software are entirely custom. Off-the-shelf RC parts aren't smooth, reliable, safe, or quiet enough.

My bad, I misunderstood your comment that you were using "(relatively) cheap brushless motor controllers".

JohnnyCowboy's concern about early motor failure from the sideloading--do you have estimates on the mean mileage between component failures, and how much replacements would cost?

They're expensive, but keep in mind that almost by the nature of the product, the customer base is going to be mostly 20-something urban professionals -- i.e. folks that make $1000 in two working days and are less likely to have a family cutting into their gadget fund.

As a late 40s father of two who has never ridden a skateboard, I started researching how hard it would be to learn and whether I should get a conventional longboard skateboard to learn on while I wait. I think the website could use some FAQs targeted at non-skateboarders.

This is a VERY compelling product, the price point is just fine. But I do want to know if I could, practically, learn to ride it from scratch in a few hours.

This might be inspirational for you:

http://shelterpub.com/_lloyd/skateboard.html

I'm a bit younger and the father of two little boys; I had a very similar reaction. "Cool, I wonder how I can talk my sons into long boarding in the parks nearby when they get a little older."

And yes, as someone who lives less than five miles from work, it is a VERY compelling product. The only problem is traffic. In normal suburban traffic a long board + a helmet would make a motorcycle look downright benign in the safety department.

Interesting point on durability. This product fits my use case, but at $1200, if I bought it and it breaks after 100 miles I would be very unhappy.

The battery itself is likely to add $400-600 to the total...

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