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The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle

kickstarter.com

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Re: The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle

#131

Post by wukkuan »

arohner wrote: post #120
aaroniba wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "Where is my bike and is it OK?" How does the skateboard avoid this? Where do you park it when you go to a restaurant or something?

I've seen a good number of people bringing longboards into coffee shops and places like that. I'd imagine it would be harder to bring it into a fancier establishment, though.

Re: The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle

#132

Post by nikatwork »

arohner wrote: post #120
aaroniba wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "Where is my bike and is it OK?" How does the skateboard avoid this? Where do you park it when you go to a restaurant or something?

Dude. It's a skateboard. You don't park it, you just carry it under your arm. Pretend it's an oversize umbrella or something :)

Re: The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle

#133

Post by shard »

aaroniba wrote: post #108
dhugiaskmak wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I thought you need one hand to use the remote?

Re: The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle

#134

Post by ScottBurson »

cuu508 wrote: post #125
aaroniba wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Faster than walking, biking, or driving. 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 r…

I have a Metroboard, and definitely feel less safe on it than I would on a bike at the same speed. The big problem is the relatively short wheelbase -- it's not hard to go over the front of the thing when braking. The Metroboard controller is pretty smart and applies braking force gradually, to give you time to lean back -- but that means stopping distances are longer.

On the whole, I thought it a rather wooly way to go 2 miles from my house to the Caltrain. For trips around 1 mile or less I think it would make a lot of sense.

Re: The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle

#135

Post by sbierwagen »

indiecore wrote: post #121
jonnycowboy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you cooling the motors?

I'd assume that you'd have a rad over the bottom of the board and the motor housing that uses the air going by as it moves to dump the heat. At least that's my first idea, since I'm not a skateboard engineer it's probably not even close.

They'll just be air-cooled: 2KW motors in a skateboard are going spend very little of their time running at max load.

I of course have no idea what the average load is, but a reasonable wild ass guess is ~100W.

Re: The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle

#137

Post by Tloewald »

wheels wrote: post #109
jonnycowboy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle

#138

Post by Tloewald »

wukkuan wrote: post #131
arohner wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Where is my bike and is it OK?" How does the skateboard avoid this? Where do you park it when you go to a restaurant or something?

I've seen a good number of people bringing longboards into coffee shops and places like that. I'd imagine it would be harder to bring it into a fancier establishment, though.

Norms may change ;-)

Re: The World's Lightest Electric Vehicle

#139

Post by Tloewald »

ajross wrote: post #53
IanDrake wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong. Slowing down vs. braking, I mean. If I'm going 20mph, "braking" to me means coming to a stop in an equivalent distance as a car or bike going the same speed. Are the brakes that you've used stable at that rate of deceleration?

It's not so much the brakes being stable, it's the operator's body with its c.g. 1m above the board. A maximum deceleration for tires on a good road is generally 0.6-0.8G. So in order to avoid being (literally) thrown off the board the rider needs to be leaning backwards by 30-40 degrees before applying the brakes. There's no equivalent to this behavior in any other vehicle. In a car you just hit the pedal, on a bike…

Makes me wonder if a two wheeled longboard -- a Segway with no handlebar you ride like a longboard -- might not give us the best of both worlds.
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