- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- technology@lemmy.world
Future Motion, the maker of the Onewheel electric skateboard, is recalling every one of them, including 300,000 Onewheel self-balancing vehicles in the US. Alongside the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the company now seeks to remedy the products after four known death cases — three without a helmet — between 2019 and 2021.
The recall comes a year after Future Motion took issue with the CPSC’s calls for recall and claimed that it tested and found nothing wrong with the Onewheels. At the time, the company issued a press release in objection to the CPSC and called the agency’s statements “unjustified and alarmist.”
Now Future Motion is moving forward with a voluntary recall it chose not to do almost a year earlier. The company is asking owners to stop using their Onewheels until they take appropriate action. For the newer Onewheel GT, Onewheel Pint X, Onewheel Pint, and Onewheel Plus XR, a software update with a new warning system is the remedy.
For early adopters, however, the CPSC and Future Motion are telling owners to stop using and discard the original Onewheel and Onewheel Plus. We asked Onewheel chief evangelist Jack Mudd in an email how many of the original units are affected, but Mudd refused to answer. Mudd also wouldn’t tell us why the company claimed there were no issues and publicly resisted issuing a recall back in 2022.
Mudd did say that the software update for the other models is rolling out worldwide, not just in the US.
Some crashes occurred due to Onewheel skateboards malfunctioning after being pushed to certain limits. The Onewheel GT, Onewheel Pint X, Onewheel Pint, and Onewheel Plus XR will receive a firmware update that will add a new warning “Haptic Buzz” feedback that riders can feel and hear when the vehicle enters an error state, is low on battery, or is nearing its limits and needs to slow down.
“This update is the culmination of months of work with the CPSC,” reads the company’s recall website. Last November, it called the CPSC’s warning about Onewheels “misleading” but stated it would “work to enhance the CPSC’s understanding of self-balancing vehicle technology and seek to collaborate with the agency to enhance rider safety.”
To install the update, owners must connect their Onewheels to the accompanying app and run a firmware update — the process is fully explained in a new video.
For early adopters, however, owners can receive a “pro-rated credit of $100 to the purchase of a new board,” according to Mudd. The credit will only be issued after owners confirm that they have disposed of the old model.
Alongside Future Motion’s blink on the decision to recall Onewheel, the company shared a new video on YouTube highlighting the new Haptic Buzz feature as well as best practices when riding. “We’ve been working closely with the CPSC for over a year in order to develop this new safety feature,” Mudd says in the video. He adds that ignoring pushback or Haptic Buzz “can result in serious injury or death.” It took engineers a while to whip up Haptic Buzz; perhaps it’s something that would not have been ready in a timely fashion after CPSC’s first whistle last year.
And you just kind of proved their point. You wouldn’t recall the board because that’s not the part that’s malfunctioning if the user isn’t wearing their PPE.
Onewheels are a board sport. Board sports come with inherent unavoidable risk. They also have limits which these users chose to push through, three of which did so without mitigating said risk by wearing PPE.
It IS the part malfunctioning though, it says so pretty clearly. Boards come with risks but the board malfunctioning is neither inherent nor unavoidable. Thats the whole point.
You clearly do not understand how the boards work. The “malfunction” is when the user overcomes the torque available to the motor for self balancing to take place. The user’s center of gravity goes too far forward while moving at too high of a rate of speed and the motor cannot physically produce enough torque to keep itself under the rider and the result is a nose dive.
It’s just physics. There is absolutely zero way to prevent this via engineering. It is inherent and unavoidable. The only thing you can do is not surpass the maximum operating speed at which the motor is no longer able to safely keep the board under the rider. Hence the latest update which adds a physical vibration the user can feel when approaching this limit.