We all know free rolling is terrible on these systems due to the amount of drag involved with all the various parts. I am trying to understand how a bicycle or a car achieves ~95% free rolling through their transmissions and sprockets but an e-board with a belt or gear drive isn’t able to… will there be something that overcomes this one day soon?
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Never 100% there is always some friction
I can’t remember exact details but basically they run on a 1 way system that only allows movement in a single direction
We could integrate that but it would require losing our current brakes and regen and using mechanical brakes instead
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wouldn’t mind mechanical brakes… at least there’s more control perhaps instead of a failing ESC or an accidental flick causing a throw-off to occur! E-brakes are so twitchy at the wrong moments.
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There’s a lot of assumption in this post that aren’t true.
- Cars and by bikes have nowhere close to 100% free roll.
- A properly built and tensioned belt drive will free roll as well as a bike, but not as good as a car.
Practically, Ify you want decent free roll look at hub/direct drive & gear drive systems. While they still aren’t 100% that of a push board they are substantially closer.
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apologies - not 100%, but enough to not throw you off the board in a shutdown situation and some help with the range on flat terrain.
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I don’t think anybody would mind mechanical brakes, but they take space, and we already don’t have much on our boards, at least on thane.
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Like I said…
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On rubber pump your tires to maximum and go for a gear drive.
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unfortunately, many people here don’t believe in hub or direct drives. 
wait! that’s just an assumption… do the gears in cars completely disengage to achieve the excellent free rolling? Manual transmissions are superb at free rolling.
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I think that esk8 NEEDS mechanical brakes. I know there are options out there, but not enough. There’s a reason electric cars haven’t gone away from mechanical brakes, even with regen. IMo it’s one of the biggest safety concerns with an esk8.
Cars freeroll isn’t that great at all. Cars are actually really inefficient. Even with your foot off the gas your engine is still idling helping your ‘freeroll’. Combustion engines and modern cars can still only put down about 30 percent of the energy they produce(most of them are even lower than this actually).
Been an auto mechanic for almost 10 years now, just my two cents.
EDIT2: Efficiency in esk8’s is actually one of our hobbies more fascinating features. esk8s are 10x more efficient than almost any other vehicles. I think a lot of e-cars are over 300wh/mile, while we are close to 15-25wh/mi
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You will have a hard time without the brake booster as you know, when the electrical system is out of order.(EV and Combustion)
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True. But unlike an esk8, they don’t shut down completely when out of power. And most smaller vehicles(like motorcycles and such) don’t need a booster at all.
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or lose remote signal!
More like 40-45wh per mile 
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Casual cruising?
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Yes 
. Nah jk. Riding like a bat out of hell
Casual cruising will probably be around 35wh for me
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I’ll feed you with my numbers soon. 
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This is absolutely true, I set my belt tension not too tight so it won’t be dragging the wheel that bad at the same time the teeth won’t skip it I brake too hard 
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I’ve to say. These numbers come from pneumatics and casual cruising for me means 30mph on fairly flat grounds
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Yeah. You must be very careful with belt tension. Some people tend to set up their belts too damn tight. That will definitely take a toll on your range and components
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