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.

131 points
*

Loose definition of a recall. Newer models are getting a software update. Older models are told to be thrown in the bin and get $100 credits to buy a new one

For early adopters, however, the CPSC and Future Motion are telling owners to stop using and discard the original Onewheel and Onewheel Plus.

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.

permalink
report
reply
127 points

$100!? LMAO, ok. That’ll fix ya right up. And it’s a credit so basically useless unless you buy their crap.

permalink
report
parent
reply
114 points

Especially considering the lowest price model is $1050 before tax

permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

FFS that is crazy expensive

permalink
report
parent
reply
37 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
43 points

$100 off of a $2000 replacement, the rest of which will have to be done out of pocket. “We’re down with offering a recall, but we had to make sure it lines our C-suite’s pockets first.”

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points
*

And you wouldn’t even want wanted to replace them either because they’re completely unserviceable with digitally locked parts and a board that will brick itself if you disconnect the battery to do any sort of service.

They come out of the factory as e-waste.

permalink
report
parent
reply
18 points
*

I mean car recalls often don’t have the cars go fully back to the manufacturer, just to a dealer to have the part fixed or firmware updated.

For XR users they are flat out saying not to use your board until the firmware comes out, and for everyone else they’re saying not to use them until you can update the firmware.

Honestly it’s a little shady that the CPSC let them avoid issuing a recall until a firmware update was ready, but it sounds like they would have forced them to fully recall all models if they hadn’t been able to come up with haptic feedback.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Newer models are getting a software update.

That doesn’t exclude it from being a recall though?

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Tell that to the NHTSA with Tesla lol

permalink
report
parent
reply
104 points

Aren’t the early models the only ones that can actually be modified and repaired using consumer available parts? Seems kind of fishy to me that those are the only ones that are being binned.

permalink
report
reply
47 points

Someone discovered they can gain repeat customers if they issued a “recall” and offered a money tree seed to those who have been the longest holdouts on updating.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Our salesmen got hurt on one of those last weekend.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
71 points

Onewheel is a garbage, monopolistic company that spits on consumer rights.

permalink
report
reply
13 points

Yes, you said company already.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

Yeah but i love my GT so… also, I dont remember ever seeing any VESC anywhere near as good

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

I’m not super involved with the community but I thought vesc was starting to match futuremotion software, aren’t the floatlife guys using vesc as daily drivers or something?

permalink
report
parent
reply
-32 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

You seem nice

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points
*

I don’t know about garbage, but what actual monopolistic practices have they shown? Haven’t they just cornered that market with a unique and superior product?

permalink
report
parent
reply
58 points

Watch Louis Rossman’s videos for more details, but no. Onewheel is extremely litigious and were able to get a patent for the entire design of single wheel vehicles, so they can basically sue anybody for patent infringement just for making any kind of single wheeled vehicle.

It would be like if Ford got a patent for any machine with an engine and four wheels, and could sue any company that tried to create their own car.

They also have spent a ton of effort purposely making their Onewheel boards as tough to repair as possible. The earliest models of boards used a bunch of off the shelf parts and could be swapped, modded, and repaired by regular folks. They started writing their software to purposely brick any new boards detected if plugged in, so users couldn’t buy a battery or motherboard from a broken Onewheel of the same model and use parts from it on to repair their current Onewheel.

They are super anti-consumer, anti-competition, and only are as popular as they are because of these practices. They innovate less and less and instead spend tons of effort making sure nobody else can create a better product. They also don’t want users modding or repairing their products, because they can’t monetize that.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Aw man, that’s super lame. Thanks, I’ll check out those videos!

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Haven’t electric unicycles been around for way longer though? I remember Vat 19 selling one years ago and one of the meal delivery companies in my city uses them on occasion. Do they have a patent on those too?

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Sounds like capitalism working as intended.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-4 points

Yep… I too think they are awesome 👍

permalink
report
parent
reply
70 points
*

Can’t wait to see Rossmann’s video on this one. Especially the part about how their idea of a recall is to tell people to throw away their device and buy a new one.

Edit-- https://youtu.be/Q_Mk-5XkSmY

permalink
report
reply
10 points

Same lol I’ll have the popcorn ready

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
42 points

Four deaths per 300,000 boards? Hoo-boy! Wait until the CPSC hears about cars!

permalink
report
reply
38 points

Cars and bikes would be banned if they were invented today.

We are incredibly tolerant of dangers that we are already familiar with.

permalink
report
parent
reply
27 points
*

There’s a lot of things that wouldn’t fly if they were invented today. Like could imagine how controversial libraries would be?

It would be shunned as socialism, and major publishers of books and DVDs would sue whoever came up with the concept into oblivion.

I mean shit look with how much contempt IP holders have against archive.org for trying to make sure nothing becomes lost media

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

What about motorcycles? Surely they would be okay.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Alcohol comes to mind.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

We did ban that, and it didn’t really do much. It just created a black market, much like weed today.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Alcohol, bringing society down since forever.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

It’s really only one death since 3 idiots weren’t wearing helmets.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

No, its like paragliding without a helmet, which a lot of people do btw.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

Not sure how not wearing a helmet makes it okay to be killed by a faulty product.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

Because if you die from not wearing proper PPE, that’s on you.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points
*

The difference as far as I could tell from the text would be that car accidents are usually the users fault while this is attributed to the products failure or bad usability.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points
2 points

Thanks for that link, very interesting. I didnt cite the 94% though, I didnt even know about that statistic. Also, even if it isnt 94%, its probably close to that. Even if its just half of that, you cant blame the other half directly on the cars malfunction, those accidents are probably caused by many factors. So like I was saying, in this case the fault seems to lie entirely with the product.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Thanks for that, really interesting data

permalink
report
parent
reply
-8 points

That’s a false equivalence if I’ve ever seen one.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

It’s definitely not a false equivalency. The death rate per capita is one way you compare how deadly a mode of transportation is.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points
*

I don’t deny that, but there’s different reasons why they are deadly, and not all of those reasons are CPSC’s oversight.

permalink
report
parent
reply

News

!news@lemmy.world

Create post

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

Community stats

  • 14K

    Monthly active users

  • 20K

    Posts

  • 510K

    Comments