After first refusing, OneWheel recalls all of its self-balancing electric skateboards
After first refusing, OneWheel recalls all of its self-balancing electric skateboards
"The company indicates that all models of OneWheels sold between 2014 and 2023 are subject to the recall."
That's pretty much a death sentence for the company, isnt it?
Not really, this isn't "recall" as in, send all your boards back and we'll fix them or give you your money back, this is "recall" as in, "stop using your board until you install the new firmware update".
...atleast for all their boards sold in the last ~4 years. For anyone with the original two models they're saying "recall" as in "destroy them, prove it to us, and we'll give you $100 in store credit" ... which is a shit move from a shit company but also certainly won't bankrupt them unless they face some kind of class action lawsuit which is unlikely given the low numbers those boards sold in.
Y recall they mean asking you to stop using it then offering you a discount to buy a new one. That’s BS.
Can I get a TL;DR on this? I'm assuming that "all our users are dickheads and ruin college campuses" isn't a valid reason to recall nearly a decade of product.
It allegedly just shuts off and hits the brakes when top speed is hit lmao. Causing it to eject its rider.
That's not entirely true. The "top speed" on these can easily be exceeded although the board will attempt to thwart this by changing the ride angle. The issue is that past a certain speed (maybe 15 mph) they use a technique called field weakening to provide higher speeds. While field weakening provides higher RPMs it comes at the cost of torque. At high speeds it becomes easier to max out the motors duty cycle. When the motor reaches its max duty cycle it has no more power to hold the nose up and can drop the rider. The only warning currently available is the speed based nose lift to let you know you are at the speed they've set as "max".
The recall will add a new feature that will provide an audible alert and vibration when the board reaches 90% of its available duty cycle well before it runs out of power. Hopefully it works as intended and prevents a lot of avoidable accidents.
There are no breaks, the mirror shuts off, because it's gone over its limit. The board warns you, when it reaches that's limit. There is not much to do about this, because physics
Anyone who saw one of the assholes riding this and thought "hmm, I need to get one of those" deserves to be flung off at 30mph too
