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.
Instead of relying on a “Haptic Buzz” that the rider can choose to ignore, maybe the board should just automatically stop/slow down under these conditions. If engineers insist on the “buzz”, it should be used to alert the rider that the software has overridden user input for safety reasons. Giving reckless, careless, or ignorant riders the option to blow off a warning doesn’t seem like a great idea.
Wouldn’t slowing down, while you’re leaning forward just forcefully dismount you, face first, on the pavement?
I’m going to repeat what I said to another user:
Do you seriously think I was talking about slowing down abruptly enough to hurt people? Do you understand that it’s possible to slow down just by cutting power to the motor and coasting to a stop? Have you ever ridden a bicycle or driven a car?
You shouldn’t be so rude when you’re just dead wrong
you move forward by leaning forward. The board’s acceleration counteracts the leaning while driving you forward in the process. If it stopped suddenly, the front end would suddenly lean too far forward and hit the ground.
Due to the board’s, uh, ingenious one wheel design, when you lean forward, the motor must accelerate forward to counteract the force and keep self-balancing. Same with leaning backyard, the motor must accelerate backward (either slowing down or reversing) to keep you balanced. So, if you’re already leaning forward, it’s physically impossible for the board to decelerate without losing its self-balancing properties. In addition to that, if the motor is already on its peak speed and can’t accelerate any further, if you lean forward even more, the motor won’t have enough spare acceleration in order to counteract it and keep self-balancing, leading to crash. The firmware update seems to add some buzz/vibration to alert the rider when the motor is near its limit.
The sudden stop issue is what leads to most accidents with these things.
Objects in motion want to stay in motion.
The board stopping doesn’t mean the 140-250lbs jackass on top will stop moving.
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Do you seriously think I was talking about slowing down abruptly enough to hurt people? Do you understand that it’s possible to slow down just by cutting power to the motor and coasting to a stop? Have you ever ridden a bicycle or driven a car?
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Yes. Poorly and briefly, but yes.
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Of course. Like all humans, I immediately learn the inner workings of every piece of machinery I come in contact with.
I haven’t even ridden one, and even I’m aware that’s a terrible idea.
The motor is the one thing keeping that wheel see-saw balanced, and if it stopped being able to do that, one end would crash in the pavement and rapidly decelerate. The rider, on the other hand, would not–they would go flying instead.
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Not quite. My idea is inherently unchanged: I still think it’s a bad idea for the OneWheel to allow the rider to continue riding when the OneWheel software recognizes a problem.
I did underestimate the importance of the “Haptic Buzz”. Okay. Give the rider plenty of warning and time to stop safely before any other steps I suggested are taken.
Again I ask: do you seriously think I was talking about slowing down abruptly enough to hurt people?
I don’t care what your answer is. I’m done with this.
These are two to four wheel vehicles, not one wheelers.
It’s a whole different thing.
In terms of balance, yes, but momentum still works the same way.
It doesn’t, at all.
You sit in a car and on a bicycle you’re either attached by 4 or 5 points to the entire thing.
On a one wheel, you’re a pivot.
And the cutting out power thing you suggest creates a situation where the cooperation between your balance and the balancing mechanism of the one wheel suddenly disappears, throwing your balance off, which combined with your body as the top of the pivot keeping momentum while the one wheel stops, creates a majestic launch to make you eat shit.
I think it’s hilarious that people jump to the conclusion that I mean an instant, abrupt stop.
If stopping on a OneWheel is as dangerous as you’re making it out to be, there would have been a LOT more than four deaths, and the company would have been sued into oblivion by now.
Don’t reply right away. Take a few minutes to relax and mull it over.
Stopping a Onewheel while fully in control of the balance of controls is easy enough, sure.
Having a Onewheel stop for you in any regard other than by the control of the rider is a guaranteed ticket to eating asphalt. Doesn’t matter how slow you do it. People already fall off and eat shit on these things frequently when they’re functioning properly, because the whole thing is operated by balance.
The wheel is instructed to move forward by the rider leaning forward. So you’re tilted in at about a 60-70 degree angle from the ground moving at high speed. To stop, you lean backward, and the slowing of the wheel is counteracted by your shift in balance which drastically alters your center of gravity as the board goes from pushing the rider to being pushed by the rider, as your angle shifts around to 110 degrees fully behind the board. Assuming rightward motion to illustrate the example, you go from standing being pointed like this [ / ] to being pointed like this [ \ ].
If the board slows speed without your consent you’re going to fall off it. Guaranteed. It’s a fact of physics. It could speed up without much issue because the balance of - well, balance, doesn’t shift by much. But slowing it down shifts the balance across the vertical axis. Unless you also shift your body across this vertical axis, you’re going to eat street.
Please stop, and just take the explanation from folks who have ridden these. I completely understand your point that if something is wrong with the device the smart thing is to prevent itself from being used. That makes sense. But you’ve now quadrupled down on this idea that will get people hurt. Just let it go.
That said though I’ll also take my own advice, because it’s not like designers at Onewheel are reading this thread looking for solutions. Nobody is in danger of thinking this plan is a good idea. So our discussion here doesn’t really have a point anyway.
Exactly, the one wheel is inherently dangerous, because it only has one wheel, because how it is told to move forward/backward and because you’re standing on it rather than sitting or holding on to it.
Fuck, those 2 wheeled lil things from hell that have a steering wheel to hold onto are already a major danger for most people.
A one wheel is 100x more dangerous to control and adding features that make it even more dangerous, not to protect the rider, but to protect the one wheel, is just asking for trouble.
I think your comment is the most reasonable I’ve seen, my own included.
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I think this is the whole point. Riders were asking more of the boards than the boards could do, and when the board was unable to comply the rider would lose their balance. Haptic feedback tells the rider “nah, not doing that” so they’re aware the board isn’t going to do the thing and can adjust their balance accordingly.