25mph top speed
12 miles range
11lbs
900 kickstarter
1300 retail
I don’t get it, why would anyone want this more than esk8?
NGL, i always wanted to build one of these
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Mid 90s, in my early 20’s, I had to get 1.8 miles.
Only transport available, was a trick skateboard with tiny, super hard duro wheels on imperfect asphalt.
It Fucking sucked.
I can’t see any other use for these.
A way to get to the distant ramp when no other way is possible.
Only to be mocked into submission by the same douchebag who will steal it/smash it when your back is turned.
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If i can get straight cut gears im in
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I’ve often thought about making some like this too, except with a juice container featuring a hole cut in, on top of the pole so it would also double up as a fruit picker.
It can’t be any worse than the bungee cord and electrical conduit telescopic magnet I made for my bike once. The idea was that the giant N50 magnet would stick to the back of a truck, and away we go. Never quite did get it working as intended…
how would you disengage the magnet? 
Brakes. It would only stretch out so far, and spring back. It was too heavy and wobbly though. The only hazard really would be something breaking and getting caught up with the wheels.
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I wanna build this but optimize it heavily for size and weight. I don’t think it needs to go over 15mph
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This made me instantly think of the guy we ran into on our ride in RI with that skate stick thing haha
Yeah , meeting him as got me thinking about this idea
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Just say no to preorders, kickstarters, and crowdfunding.
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Seeing this concept resurface brings back a rollercoaster of memories…
I think it was back in 2017~2018 that I started to join the electric skate builders forum, absorbing lots of info, but not showing much in terms of my own builds. Not that it was a secret or anything, but land paddlers probably are considered by skaters the same way that surfers consider paddleboarders… (gay a.f.!). It certainly was on the fringe, and no reason to unleash an avalanche of snarky comments, until our prototype got refined a bit. But I totally believed in the concept for some applications. And I still do, by the way.
The idea of reusing all the different “analog” boards that I already had, pushed, even mongo-pushed or wind powered with windsurf sails, kites or wings, alongside the core concept of “fuck pushing” that animates us all.
Using a motorized stick ticked quite a few boxes. When there were horror stories left and right of people streetfacing due to a loose solder joint or a cheap BMS cutting off, or sub quality e-skate trucks made out of chinesium splitting in half, there was value in using trusty downhill gear on the board, and having an independent driving unit. Nothing bad really happens if anything fails on the propulsion stick. And boy did we break lots of stuff over the years!
I say “we”, because I teamed up with a very good friend in doing this side project.
Long story short, we spent something like 5yrs, about $10k, learnt a lot along the way, about 3D printing, CNCs, machining, battery building, we met some crazy talented people in various industries, we helped a friend motorize his wheelchair. And we of course had a lot of fun riding our prototypes. We were still not really at the stage where we could turn that into a viable product, because that is crazy hard and expensive, but we were trying to see if we could get some people interested enough to support us on the path to commercialization. That’s also at this stage that my friend started to get pressure from his wife to only invest his time or money into productive things. I had a fulltime job that funded my side, and my spending was my own problem. That was different for him, so he decided to put that project on the shelf. To be honest, that still feels a bit like a breakup, bit of a sour aftertaste, but we’re still friends and that’s very important, considering how supportive he was after my girlfriend’s suicide 10yrs ago. He’s family. In hindsight, maybe it’s not the best decision to get in business with friends. There’s a real risk to damage that friendship.
Because I still believe in the concept, and because I’m still having a lot of fun when I’m using my sticks around Christchurch, I’ll see if I resurect it, or if I publish all of our design work, for someone else to make it happen. Still a bit too soon.
Anyway, those guys didn’t invent it, and of course, nor did we. I believe we refined that old concept quite a bit, and I see that they’ve chosen some directions that we discarded. They use a belt on the outside, we went for a chain in the inside. They put electronics and battery at the end of the stick exposed to the vibrations of the pavement, we thought it was much nicer to have battery and controller in a small bag, at the expense of an ombilical cord. And we used off the shelf wheels, like Cloudwheels or Torqueboard’s 110mm instead of custom rollers. We were more battery agnostic in terms of form factor, and mostly delegating the many risks inherent to the Li-Ion batteries to power tools companies.
I won’t be showing too much now, but here’s an early prototype I took with me to south of France, 2019.
And a more modern version, a 5 wheeler on cloudwheels:
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