121–130 of 174 posts
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Part of our tech is very efficient, compact, and (relatively) cheap brushless motor controllers. It's not easy.
How are you cooling the motors?
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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 t…
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?
edit: Also, after these boards do reach final production, do you plan on expanding your tech to other loaded longboards? Never loved the vanguard, but the tan tien is great.
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One says it "changed his life." I would genuinely like to hear more about this.
I said that. I realized my world was divided into: places I could walk to, places I could bike to, and places I could drive to. Where I live (downtown Palo Alto), driving is a hassle because of traffic and parking. Driving is annoying, boring, frustrating, life-wasting... basically I hate driving and use it only as a last resort. Walking is great, but it's slow. It's really time-consuming to walk anywhere beyond a fe…
Is it really faster than biking? How? I imagine braking on this thing is not as good as on bike--harder to control stability, also smaller surface contact area. If you cannot stop fast, you cannot afford to go fast...
On a bike I can usually blend into city traffic, draft large vehicles, weave through traffic jams, or hop on to sidewalk. Doing the same with longboard would require serious skill (and be probably less safe), I think.
Co-founder here. Feel free to ask questions!
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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.
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I agree that yes, you should definitely be experienced if you're going to be going 20mph on a longboard. It's fast. But, if you've got brakes, and I've ridden both electric skateboards with brakes and non-electric skateboards with brakes before and both are easy to use, you'll probably never end up going that fast in the first place unless you're being reckless. A power slide is one way to stop, but brakes work just…
At 10mph (a more likely speed for this 2.5hp board), worst case, I jump off and run-stop (or roll)... twisted ankle/etc is possible. But at $1200 a piece, I'd really regret the loss/damage that might cause the to the board.
I value my ankles and epidermis at several dozen times "$1200 a piece". I consider your stance to be the utter epitome of foolishness.
This is one of those things that's like Google in the sense that it seems to be just an improvement on existing technology, but in fact is enough of an improvement that it's qualitatively different. In all the startups we've funded I don't think I've seen one whose product was so enthusiastically embraced by YC partners. Three bought one of these boards. One says it "changed his life."