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.
…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.
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.
used to alert the rider that the software has overridden user input
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.
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?
Have you ever ridden a bicycle or driven a car
These are two to four wheel vehicles, not one wheelers.
It’s a whole different thing.
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?
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.
Super loose definitions of “every single” and “recall” here.
The oldest models are recalled, yes. Most of the units or on the world just need a software update.
A software update to a vehicle to correct a safety failure is a “recall” in industry terminology.
The oldest ones are not fixable and they advise junking them!
Are they going to recall all of the clones that are out there, too? All of these one-wheel “hoverboards” are super dangerous and nobody seems to care.
It’s not like a skateboard or bike, where propelling the vehicle is all controlled by your body, or easy to find controls on a bike. A electric scooter has controls on the handle. These hoverboards are controlled by merely standing on them, and it’s way too easy to try to stand on it and immediately break a leg or arm as it flies off away from you. You can’t just turn it on and off as you’re trying to stand on it.
This recall seems to be in response to a software bug that causes it to spontaneously shut down, leading to a crash. Competing products probably don’t have the same bug.
That’s unrelated to any inherent risk in riding one. There is certainly inherent risk in riding an electric unicycle/skateboard hybrid, which is obvious to most people upon reading the phrase “electric unicycle/skateboard hybrid”.
Getting on one of those things before you’re ready is almost as bad as suddenly stopping. My wife broke her arm after trying to show my son how it works, and I know co-workers with similar stories, including head injuries.
Immediately took the damn thing back. This is just the 2020s version of lawn darts.
They at least claim that the software “bug” they are fixing on the newer boards with the update is only to implement a (better?) warning system as the crashes happen when you push the board too hard and it can’t keep up, causing it to nosedive or shut off completely due to overload. If you ride it sensibly, that shouldn’t be an issue.
Asking people to scrap the old boards just because they cant get a warning system does kinda sound like there actually is some deeper issue they don’t want to disclose though.
Da fuck is a OneWheel? I litterally had no idea this thing existed.
Imagine typing out your whole comment instead of just looking at the image on the article or googling it
Looking forward to the Louis Rossmann video on this
Edit: It’s up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Mk-5XkSmY
