New Electric Skateboard Models | Hacker News Reader

New Electric Skateboard Models

boostedboards.com

74 pointslelf64 comments

Too bad they are still illegal to use in California:

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d11/c...

This law was written in the 70s for gas-powered skateboards. We and others are working to change this, possibly as soon as the upcoming legislative session.

I see people riding them all the time in San Francisco...seems to be about as illegal as recreational pot smoking.

I see people riding them all the time. I wouldn't let this stop you if you're actually interested. It would be great if the law always reflected the reality on the ground, but when it doesn't I favor pragmatism.

"Added by terms of urgency clause"

I wish it described what this was...

Why does an electic skateboard need 2kW motors when motorized bicycles work just fine up to 18mph with 250W of support?

Because it's fun.

To be fair, 250W on an ebike is 'not fun' or anywhere close to the legal limits in the US (750-1000W).

The happy spot seems to be 2500-5000W for most hub driven ebikes. I turned my bike down to 1000W this afternoon and couldn't imagine running anything less.

Endless-sphere [1] is the place to go if you're interested in eskateboards/ebikes with a bent towards DIY/highpower.

[1] http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=35

Skateboards apparently have a much higher rolling resistance than bicycles: http://books.google.be/books?id=0JJo6DlF9iMC&lpg=PA162&ots=T...

The power multiple between a Boosted board and others' technology is the same as between a Tesla Model S and a Nissan Leaf. Both cars can go at highway speeds. The extra power of a Boosted board is important for practical reasons, like hill-climbing and braking, and for fun.

I can only speculate, but perhaps it has to do with the regenerative braking the boards provide. On an e-bike you still have friction brakes, but on one of these boards you need to be able to brake quickly using the electric motors.

More powerful motors, while perhaps not strictly necessary, would also provide quicker acceleration. For a product that's designed to be fun, this might matter more, vs e-bikes which are mostly designed to be primarily utilitarian.

An alternative to this without a remote is ZBoard (http://www.zboardshop.com), which uses weight sensing (like a Segway) to control the speed instead of a remote which seems a little more natural to ride to me than something with a hand remote like this.

I've owned both. Had a ZBoard, have a Boosted Board.

The ZBoard is utter trash compared to the Boosted Board. Build quality, ease of operation, sound of operation, ride quality are all far superior on the Boosted Board.

As someone with a fair amount of experience on an electric board (ZBoard type), I like that Boosted puts the battery packs and electronics at either end of the board. Other boards have the battery pack in the middle and it gets in the way of clearing obstacles.

Also, hand controller works nicely for me so I see no obvious advantage to having my weight distribution impact the board's motion.

Disclaimer: I've never ridden an electric skateboard of any kind. However, I have been skateboarding for well over a decade.

Does this mean that you place weight forward to go faster? That would be the opposite of natural. Weight to the back is safe, it is the stance to adopt unless you like slamming your shoulder into the pavement. I believe I would much rather have a remote than have to worry about how I place my feet and shift my weight. With big wheels like that it's less of a concern, but you'd be shocked at how often you need to shift your weight just ridding down a sidewalk.

It's supposed to be the opposite if natural. When you accelerate, you naturally lean back. You wouldn't want intentional acceleration to cause additional acceleration. You would want to keep it in check and only accelerate when the riser demonstrates they are sufficiently in control of their weight balance.

I rode some electric razors and others around a shop in SF in ...2011? These are down to sub-$150 with pretty positive reviews, and are intuitive to ride (only 40 minutes operating time, but still, at that price point).

http://www.amazon.com/Razor-E100-Electric-Scooter-Sweet/dp/B...

Or maybe i'll just stick to old school longboarding in the rain

These scooters are designed for a different use case - toys for kids. The power, reliability, and design reflect that.

If you longboard, you would LOVE the Boosted board.

One of the founders here. If anyone would like to try one, please email us at community@boostedboards.com!

From the FAQ (http://boostedboards.com/faq/):

>BRAKING DOWNHILL ON A FULL BATTERY WILL CAUSE BOARD SHUTDOWN since the regen will overcharge the battery. To prevent this from happening, the remote will warn you by beeping, and you’ll lose your braking power. Safely come to a stop before this happens, and ride on flats or uphill to drain the battery.

This seems like a pretty big design flaw.

A very rare use-case (living at the top of a hill, pulling it off the charger and immediately riding downhill and braking) would result in overcharging and damaging the battery. Riders who have this use-case run the board briefly before heading downhill. In practice this extra step has not been a problem.

It's not so much a design flaw as physics. Without adding brakes, what else could they do? They only have two energy sinks on board. The wheels aren't a sink when going downhill and the battery isn't a sink once it is full (unless you enjoy explosions[1]).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ27lAAwGsY

semi joke: what about dissipating energy in excess via heat, sound and flames? :)

more seriously: what about having a setting for not fully charging the battery (let's say 80-90%), possibly user configurable, so if you don't risk your life if you forget about it?

and finally a question: how does a Prius work? according to this[1] The amount of electrical energy capable of dissipation is limited by either the capacity of the supply system to absorb this energy or on the state of charge of the battery or capacitors. Effective regenerative braking can only occur if the battery or capacitors are not fully charged. For this reason, it is normal to also incorporate dynamic braking to absorb the excess energy.

Searching online I found this[2] that seems to be not that far from my semi joke :) as a user says "instead of taking that energy and putting into the battery, the engine throws it off as heat." But it's also true that a Prius is way more complex and bigger, so it could have more features put in place compared to a small board like this.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_brake [2] http://priuschat.com/threads/fully-charged-hv-battery-no-reg...

Prius regeneratively brakes until the battery is full, then engine brakes.

The Tesla Model S won't regen when the battery is full (or cold), either.

Boosted used as an adjective where I come from means stolen.

What is the lifetime on the wheels? At $1500 I would almost want a grease port to maintain it on my own.

Many boards have run over 1000 miles, and we have yet to replace wheels due to wear. Maintenance involves replacing bearings, and eventually wheels, but no grease port.

They imply that providing a firmware update for free is a massive gesture of good will for existing users. When is this not the norm??

The power and top speed upgrade exceeds the original specifications, and we have quadrupled the warranty coverage. This would be similar to your car getting more acceleration, more braking, a higher top speed, and a longer warranty, all remotely and for free.

Firmware update capability should be the norm, and to our knowledge we are the first and only board that can do this.

Just take a PC... Windows is it's firmware and if you want to upgrade it, then you have to pay. (Or, switch to Linux).

Or take some cars which are different models, with different power/torque ratings, but mechanically they are the same - the only difference is made in the MCU software. Or cars with their maximum speed locked and only unlocked after paying a nice sum of money (iirc it was the VW Golf GTI).

Windows is it's firmware

For a PC I'd rather call it the software, or the OS, and call the BIOS it's firmware. Which can usually be updated for free.

A PC with just a BIOS is unusable, though.

A skateboard without wheels is unusable too, and wheels are not firmware either.

A PC with a BIOS can run free operating systems such as Linux. In contrast, I assume this skateboard can only run their own software/firmware.

The difference is a PC is an open and well documented platform that anyone can write software for. This board and other embedded devices typically don't provide the details needed to implement alternative firmwares. That is the difference between windows on a PC and firmware on an embedded device.

Ha, what a coincidence. I see this on Hacker News a day after reading this¹ (found here²).

――――――

¹ — http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=904577#p904...

² — http://www.ebikes.ca/news/Electrafest/

Because electric skateboards cannot be used in the rain, I'm wondering if there are any other last mile commute vehicles that are electric but wouldn't require a special bike rack on the train, since they are usually full at commute hours. The nice thing about the skateboard is its compactness

Maybe RocketSkates?

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/feet-on-with-rocketsk...

Solowheel?

I wonder if Boosted Boards has tried putting the propulsion system on a regular skate deck instead of a longboard. Looking at the powered truck design it seems it should be doable. It seems the market would be bigger since most skaters don't ride longboards.

Can these boards be used in the rain, or when the road is damp? Where I live, roads are wet ~40% of the time, so if not this would be a huge no-go.

From the FAQ:

Is the board waterproof? No, riding the board in wet environments like rain, snow, mud, or through puddles can permanently damage the electronics and battery, cause the bearings and hardware to corrode, and may cause board failure at speed. Please DO NOT RIDE IN WET ENVIRONMENTS. Riding in wet conditions is slippery and extremely dangerous on any skateboard. Damage due to water is not covered under your warranty.

Normal boards shouldn't be ridden in the rain anyways. The trucks and bearings will rust, rendering your board into a piece of wood.

Which is unfortunate, since I live in Oregon, and I used to cruise my Miniglider everywhere. When it rained, I had to resort to walking.

Your trucks are probably aluminum and will be fine, and you can run sealed bearings. Riding in the wet really isn't such a big deal. The biggest problem is spray off of the wheels.

The board damage (if made of wood) is unavoidable though.

You can seal the wood with some kind of lacquer, though, right?

This is too bad, because I live in Bergen, Norway, where according to statistics 65% of all days have rain. So I'd have to resort to walking two thirds of the year => No longboard for me, electric or otherwise.

The FAQ says no, they aren't even a little waterproof.

I was kind of excited to buy one of these, but you know, winter is coming. Look forward to the improvements that are out when spring arrives.

Christmas is coming!

I'd love to own one of these one day.

Anyone think they can get the top model's quality at a price below $1k in a few years?

The top model has the best performance, but the quality of all models is equally high. There's a floor to how cheaply this technology can be built today without compromising quality and long-term reliability.

What is the advantage of something like this compared to something like an Airwheel [1]?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz05Cyzuo1Y

Deleted comment

IIRC it was a link to a review (techcrunch maybe?)

$999 seems a bit pricey.

How so? A brand new 49cc moped is around $2k in the states. This is a low production scale electrical vehicle with no gas use for half that.

Mostly because I can get a 12-15mile range foldable scooter for $500.

http://www.amazon.com/Super-1000watt-Electric-Scooter-button...

I'd gladly pay a little extra to get the size and weight of the board vs this 75 lb scooter; that despite folding does not seem practical at all.

Also, there's obviously a cool factor built in the price. This board is the tesla to your Nissan Leaf.

They should call it a "Scooty Puff Jr".

Wow, I WANT ONE!

I genuinely see nothing good about this product...

This is entirely personal opinion as-is. Perhaps you could discuss what you see as being bad about this product.

Mostly its combined drawbacks making it worse than the alternatives.

It's pretty heavy, a bicycle of around the same cost doesn't weigh much more than some models.

It has low range, you can get a motorised bicycle for much cheaper which has more than 3 times the range.

It can't be used in the wet, while this might not be a problem depending where you live, you're kind of screwed if it rains on your way somewhere or before you go home.

It's fairly sensitive, you're specifically recommended not to do fairly common things with it.

It's expensive, if it was fairly cheap I could see people overlooking the drawbacks and maybe using it for messing around on.

I guess it'd be OK if you really hated bikes and lived in an area where it never rained with everything nearby. The whole thing just seems really underwhelming to me.

Good points. It's best to avoid wet weather with skateboards, electric or not.

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