- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- 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.
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All of these words yet not a single one mentions what exactly was faulty about the old software. Did it force-eject drivers after “certain limits” were “exceeded”?
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Oh damn. So Virgil gave a shock to your system, eh?
Sorry, I’ll see myself out. Love Static Shock.
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The one wheel works by having the rider lean in a direction to go that way. The more you lean, the faster it goes. It balances by pushing the rider in that direction. The trick is when you are leaning and going very fast, but then the board loses power and can’t push you anymore. Then the board nose dives and ejects you. Its the physics of the board, so they can warn you it might happen, but not prevent it.
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Agreed. I was going to suggest that specifics may not be publicly available unless the company has chosen to release them, but I realized that even then, the article should EXPLAIN that issue to us instead of just leaving things vague.
Requiring disposal to get a measely $100 credit on an $1,400 to $2,200 board seems a little extreme. Full replacement? Yeah, require proof of disposal. $100? Stop using it and turn it into a museum piece or something.
That was my thought too. Not knowing how much they cost and reading $100 I already knew that amount was way too low. I’ve gotten recalls on dehumidifiers in the past and the rebate usually equated to about half of a new unit. That’s obviously apples to oranges but still a rediculous offering given the price of a newer model.
There’s a fire hazard recall out on my table saw, $75 to send them a pic of it inoperable. Nah, I’ll just keep a fire extinguisher nearby.
AFAIK it’s not even 100$, but 100$ worth of store credit. So people are being asked to return their device but it’s ok, they get a tiny discount on the next one that functions pretty much the same.
100usd off of store purchases are nothing. I am just imagining they have postponed their 100usd off black Friday deal for another 6 months to justify this ‘payment’
They don’t lose anything from this offer.
More e-waste for the landfill gods. The company should have free shipping back to them to recycle them, bare minimum. Huge waste of lithium.
Given the company’s history towards repairability, you shouldn’t buy one in the first place. They’re a future doorstop.
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!
The oldest ones are not fixable and they advise junking them!
For $100 store credit. The nerve.
Looking forward to the Louis Rossmann video on this
Edit: It’s up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Mk-5XkSmY
The fact people died on these before isnt news… the recall and getting 100 bucks for it is news.
I went directly to YouTube to check of his video was up already.
It’s going to be a blast
guess the cost of a recall and fix was cheaper than the cost of settlements
His name is Robert Paulson
Onewheel is a garbage, monopolistic company that spits on consumer rights.
Onewheel is a
garbage, monopolisticcompanythat spits on consumer rights.Means the same thing nowadays anyway
Hey now, let’s be fair. All of the companies are bad, but some of them are even more egregiously bad than others.
they had a crappy anti consumer business model anyway.
sad but not surprised they fucked up further.
Now Future Motion is moving forward with a voluntary recall it chose not to do almost a year earlier
Since when could companies just chose when to recall their defective product?
The government can compel product recalls, but must prove the product is defective. Companies can recall products voluntarily before that happens.
Got it
Onewheels are working as intended, however the cpsc put them under investigation because they questioned the safety of these boards. This recall/firmware update is the result of that.
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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”.
The sudden stop issue has been known for as long as these things existed and it’s taken until a bunch of people died for them to do anything about it.
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.
My sister broke her arm immediately upon trying to use a onewheel
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
“This update is the culmination of months of work with the CPSC,” reads the company’s recall website.
For early adopters, however, owners can receive a “pro-rated credit of $100 to the purchase of a new board,” according to Mudd.
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.
The original article contains 536 words, the summary contains 135 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
…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.
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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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.
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.
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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.
