once you start scaling up 2 wheel scooter wheels to become big enough to comfortably ride anywhere in a city that wasnt explicitly designed for scooter traffic (nyc for example), the weight of the whole scooter starts surpassing even lighter ebikes (60 lb+), without the benefit of lower costs or more transportability (few/none 500W+ scooters can be carried comfortably through a narrower nyc restaurant door)

this one came closest https://inokim.shop/collections/inokim-scooters/products/ino... but after testing it out I couldn't see the upside over a smaller folding ebike

I have a rad power bikes 'expand 5'.

Rad does consider it a commuter bike, I just consider it a tad non-optimal but not anything terrible. Great for neighborhood errands though. My neighborhood 'main drag' is great for a little shopping/eating but is about a mile and change away so it's certainly walkable but I wouldn't want to lug groceries a mile up a hill so the bike is perfect. Haven't touched my car all summer unless I was getting out of the city.

It is a bit small. I think they rate it for people who are 5'10" max, which is my height to get full leg extension. While it does fold it is quite heavy so if you are thinking about a scenario where you drive the edge of the city and bike the rest of the way in just know that getting it in and out of a trunk is a bit of a wrestling match.

Maintenance-wise, no big complaints in almost a year and a half. I had a flat tire and was able to find a replacement tube no problem at a local bike shop. I've had to replace the brake pads and frayed up the brake cable in the process so I replaced that too, did all the work myself cost me maybe ~$20 in parts. Considering swapping the brakes for some 'hybrid hydraulic brakes' aka cable pull hydraulics, those will run me a couple hundred bucks for the pair, the work seems easy enough if you've ever swung a wrench. Did some lubing of the chain... No battery issues, no controller issues.

https://www.radpowerbikes.com/collections/electric-city-comm...

There’s lots of good folding electric options right now, but if your budget allows for it, I’d *highly* recommend looking for folders with Gates drives. You will be able to roll and hold the bike folded between your legs without worrying about wiping grease all over your pants(or some unfortunate soul who bumps into it). It’s also one of the few things that lives up to its hype — it’s been entirely maintenance-free over the last ~6years I’ve been riding

Back in '07 I was working in automotive electric steering systems and the design called for a belt between motor and ball-nut. I was shocked the safety analysis was OK with that, but the durability and test data said it would be fine. We used Gates belts. I've never heard of any problem with those systems which are 15 years old now. Apparently their belts are of top notch reliability.

every brand's advantages just started blurring together until someone said "it's just going to be stolen anyway..."

with the money i saved by getting a cheaper bike, i bought the most expensive lock, to keep the thing from riding away :)

You do get used to it but never feels quite as safe as a bike.

It seems like it'd be possible to offer ultralight kickscooters that would be an apples-to-apples comparison with the onewheel that could fold down to the same collapsed size.

the smaller and lighter they are, the more integrated and specialized parts they have, for which replacements need to come directly from the manufacturer :(

still kind of crazy, the sheer variety of models that are still on youtube videos from just a couple years ago, that are no longer even possible...

I also have a folding e-bike which has larger and wider wheels than a scooter, which is preferable in my opinion. The problem with scooters and e-bikes, even folding ones, are that a lot of buildings will not let you take them indoors. Or most will have you use a freight elevator, which is operated manually AND has set hours that it’s run.

There’s also the difficulty of storing/locking them if you go out for dinner or some other event. Something as small as a Onewheel that you could pick up and walk with, and is small enough to store under a table, or take on a train without blocking anyone is a dream in this sort of environment.

Edit: I should also note that I’m speaking from my very NYC perspective.

I love it especially as a last mile option in conjunction with buses and trains.

That or kickscooters, but they're not as compact as the onewheel or a longboard.

Fundamentally, the onewheel seems like a personal-mobility answer to the V22 Osprey: a vehicle with amazing functionality and versatility in its happy path, but is fundamentally unsafe in failure because of the basic physics of the situation.

edit: onewheel, not longboard, in the final paragraph.

Attach it to a pole or whatever.

You stay in a restaurant one or two hours at most, and you simply wouldn't go there by bike if it's raining. It's unlikely to suffer from rust.

Likewise theft only tends to happen when a bike is left in the same location for extended periods of time. Defeating a good bike lock takes a special kind of people and tools, and your bike is unlikely to be spotted then stolen in a hour or two. One solution is also to park it in a relatively discreet location, or you could go for an area full of bikes (double-edged sword; more bikes means it's lost in the sea, but also that it's a prime location for thieves. Then again if you have a functional metropolitan police they'd be watching such locations).

Personally I use an e-bike in London, I attach it everywhere outside, I never had a problem despite my bike being very cool-looking (it's a British equivalent to Super73). While London is certainly more civilized than New York City, it does have significant crime as well in certain areas.

From what I remember, the blue power light would be on, but it would take restarting the board for it to engage properly again.

> Once the device senses that it is getting dangerously close to these limits, it shuts off. This wouldn’t be a big problem on a regular motorized scooter, moped, or other comparable device, but the Onewheel has self-balancing technology that requires power. Instead of simply cutting off additional forward momentum and letting the user coast to a stop, the board lurches violently forward into the ground as soon as the motor stops, according to the reports of injured users.

What do you think should happen at that edge case? Preferably in a way that adheres to physics…

Amazing, would love to hear how this works!

Why this feature wasn't implemented after the first prototype ever made is completely beyond me. Seems like a literal no brainer. The "bump" feedback can easily be mistaken for an uneven road surface (ask me and my broken ass wrist how I know) but a board buzzing and audibly yelling at you is hard to mistake.

The nose starts lifting and it’s quite obvious. I’ve heard the term “Captain Morganing” in multiple groups of riders, because that’s how it feels if you’re not aggressively leaning into it to go faster.

The GT already has an audible alert, it’s less obvious than pushback.

It seemed like vernon99 was talking about nosediving from a complete stop(trying to go from motor off -> motor engaged but the motor doesn’t engage), whereas in the post you linked to, I was talking about starting from having the motor engaged already at a low speed (ie <5mph slowly moving back and forth waiting for a light) and then the power would just drop out.

Same result, but likely different causes.

If I had to guess, it sounds like the motor hits some thermal limit and cuts out. Which would explain why it happens at red lights often, lots of high torque motor excursion performing small moves to maintain balance, but little to no airflow because the motor isn’t moving fast enough to pump air through itself.

I also stand by this: The Onewheel was the most versatile commuter option I’ve ever used in NYC.

If failsafes were added that didn’t rely on ‘maintain balance while skidding on your nose or tail at 15+mph in traffic if the power decides to randomly cut off’, I’d likely buy it again.

I’ve been wondered something like this too when I see people bring their scooters into a restaurant, the gym or other indoor spaces. I get that you don’t want it stolen but it would untenable if everyone did it.

I can definitely recommend falling on grass or mud rather than concrete or asphalt. ;-) And if you can't run off the scooter, rolling sometimes helps.

Even after my experiences crashing on a scooter, I still love riding them. Suspension can help you keep your balance a bit better, but there's always a failure point that's possible to hit if you're not ready for it.

I suspect e-bikes are a bit more stable than scooters, especially with bigger, fatter wheels, but then, you can stick a leg out or run off a scooter, whereas doing either of those things at speed is a bit harder sitting on a bike. And it's a different feel for the road/sidewalk.

But honestly if we are blue sky dreaming for a second - I wonder if there will come a time when a two wheel kick scooter can self-balance, such as by using more wheels in a different configuration or by using some other kind of board or motor technology to stay balanced more of the time. If a scooter also had the ability to predict if it was going to crash into a curb or pothole or if there were more safety features, even maybe better jackets and jeans that have padding in all the right places to support falls, I’d think we’re moving in the right direction. The gotcha is that we’ve had time to understand what bikes and cars need for safety but we haven’t had as much time to understand what makes for a safer scooter ride yet. Likewise e-bikes too, if you ask me. And jury’s still out as to whether or not bikes or cars have “solved” their safety issues completely.

I should say that scooters are definitely still improving. A new latch design is slightly better than the old one, suspension can help maintain balance in some situations but not others, and some scooters have anti-skid technology so the front and back wheels always rotate at the same speeds at the cost of a loss of power going up hills sometimes.

Hey, and why not even hold a wing up when the battery is low!? That can also charge it up!

I really don't know.

if you crash on a scooter, is the crash and possible recovery complicated by the handlebar in your way?

Bikes are definitely on the big end, being things that not everyone can carry, and that definitely can't just be strapped onto your back. (But they do let you carry cargo.)

I believe they just released a new firmware along with this recall and they have added something new. Might be vibration or sound but I can't remember exactly what.

If this is such an innovative and important feature, there is no reasonable way to explain why it took the company so long to release it.

Here’s the announce copy from their email on the update:

“Today we're releasing an innovative new safety feature called "Haptic Buzz". Haptic Buzz is an audible and tacti e alert that riders hear and feel when nearing the operational limits of the board. Haptic Buzz provides riders with additional feedback that is immediate and intuitive so they can ride with more confidence than ever.”

If you have more technical details I’m interested to understand how it works. In the distant past I started my career in a power electronics research lab, building motor drive systems among other things, so a deep dive into HapticBuzz would be amazing.

Then again I’ve seen videos of EUCs doing nearly double the top speed of a Onewheel.

It’s all relative to the rider’s ability and willingness to continue stomping the accelerator as it increases in resistance.

At the same time, I’m doubtful that software bugs in the proprietary code are related to the vast majority of these failures people describe. The only legitimate issues I’ve seen are caused by sensors (either the foot sensor itself, or improper mounting usually related to grip tape) or water damage.

A Onewheel attempts to self balance. To accelerate, you lean the direction you want to go. As your speed increases, the board starts tilting the nose up to signal it’s reaching its limit. Powering the motor requires energy, and self-balancing requires additional energy beyond that, so a safe amount of headroom needs to be reserved to accommodate for variations in terrain and rider movements.

When the noise starts tilting up, there’s nothing to stop the rider from leaning forward more, which also signals to accelerate. This is called “pushing through pushback” and it’s required to go more than ~16-18 mph.

Imagine the extreme case where you quickly lift your rear foot off the board. Obviously it’s going to stop suddenly, and you’ll fly through the air and smash into the ground. Every nosedive is exactly this scenario, just slightly less extreme.

Once I grasped this simple concept it became obvious that every fall was my own fault. This is why I recommend new riders practice balancing with the board powered off. If you can’t easily do that, you have no business pushing through pushback.

The boards being “fixed” by this recall are getting a new feature that makes the board vibrate at high speeds. This is done by modulating the motor, it requires no new transducer. The only “failure” is of the rider being oblivious to the signal the board is sending.

Source: own a V1, Plus, and GT; ridden thousands of miles on my own and other’s boards; ran a meetup and met a huge variety of rider types; once raced in the GoPro Games; crashed hundreds of times including the obligatory bone-breaking incident resulting in surgery

tl;dr: Future Motion is anti-consumer, haptic feedback is overdue, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Onewheel. Every nosedive is ultimately due to rider error.

This is orthogonal to riders accepting they’re participating in a fun but very dangerous board sport.

They assume they are shipping bugs and in some cases they are intentionally shipping bugs to make deadlines. It’s scary for a business to decide to make those bugs public even though most of us know the end result is better product quality and higher social capital.

I am sure they are, but companies making products that relate to human safety simply should not do this.

> even though most of us know the end result is better product quality and higher social capital.

I agree. I guess I wish there was more education about this in our higher institutions and I suppose at conferences. They should be asking questions about what is best for their business and we should be sharing stories of how open source can work in big business.

I suspect a lot of the fear of open source is driven by the uncertainty of how big the "easier" in this sentence is.

On the competitors side, what if it's currently taking up 90% of your competitor's time just to understand what you're doing and make a rough not-quite-as-good imitation, whereas if it was open source that time drops to 5% leaving them much more scope to improve on top?

Plus, there's fear about security too. Sure nobody should rely on security by obscurity, but that doesn't mean it can't be a helpful thing and what if hackers spend more time reviewing the code you release than friendly bug finders do? I personally have no idea if there's any data on whether OSS has better, the same, or worse track record on average for being hacked, or if there've been studies on how often hacks happen with or without source code being available, etc. but regardless of the actual odds, it feels like the business equivalent of leaving your house's front door open 24/7, so it can be an emotional argument as much as anything.

And like you said, the current default expectation is closed source as default, so the decision makers find safety in making the choice that feels less risky unless they can be sure it will bring big enough positives to be worth it.

That assumes that the problem is buggy code, isn't it? What if it is buggy hardware? What if it is the electronics that is glitching out?

I've been using the Segway mini for years and think it's amazing, it hits all those things you mentioned.

Its only problem is that it's no longer sold, and mine is starting you show its age. My wheels and battery need changing, but I'm not sure if anyone can actually do that anymore.

So I'd really like another option...

Does the one-wheel have that?

1: https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/engines-equipmen....

It's not like a bike or E-Bike.

I have no clue how you look at this and don't think 'death trap's or 'stupid way of dying '

Except for that part where you're going faster than the fastest sprinter, with a high center of gravity. Even with a helmet, and no explicit defect, these things are inherently extremely dangerous by their very design.

It’s unfortunate that so many people fail to recognize the inherent danger and choose to blame the device instead of their abilities.

Anyone who can’t control their balance on the fulcrum of a kart tire — under their own muscle power — trying to go fast on one of these boards is outright reckless.

[doubt]

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

I only meant that it would have been the best commuting tool for me.

It's not as compact as your device, but it gets quite small when folded for storage, and there's a configuration where you fold it down except for the handlebars and can push it around like a little cart.

Get a good pair of padded gloves though. The small, high pressure tires are a punishing ride over shitty pavement. I.e., the kind that's found everywhere in Boston.

If you sold it or gave it away, did you tell the new owner about this defect?