I’m honestly not really sure, I haven’t gotten around to watching that video yet. It may be a new version of the remote
Hey all- It’s been a while since I was around. Has anyone made all terrain wheels or adapters for all terrain wheels that will work with Abec or Kegel cores so that I can turn my Revel 4WD into an absolute monster? Also, if anyone has any helpful weatherproofing/ waterproofing tips for the Revel kit (on top of @pkasanda swim cap method) I’d love to know. Hope everyone is doing well!
Jason Liu is developing one. I think it may be out in a few months. 105 mm. Lighter than cloud wheels. Strong aluminum core.
seeing as they’re only 105mm I’m guessing they’re not pneumatic?
Correct. But there might be a 105 pneumatic version much further down the road.
Rubber or PU?
Rubber. Jason has compared them to Cloudwheels. He feels his rubber wheels give a better ride and more traction.
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Yeah but 20% less range and will wear out very quickly, I suppose 
Jason says he gets 16 km range with a 2WD revel kit and his 105 Rubber wheels. I assume he was riding gently to maximize range. He’s not a heavy rider.
Its the wheel diameter that affects range. I don’t think the tire material has much effect. Whether you switch to 110 TB or 105 Cloud wheels, the larger tire diameter hits the battery hard because ever moment of accelleration has an amplified impact on voltage sag. A 105 mm tire is 17% larger than a 90mm tire. So every moment to accelerate or maintain speed is equivalent to accelerating 17% harder or traveling up a 17% grade.
There are only two ways to counteract that.
a) You can limit your acceleration with a gentle thumb or by riding in a lower speed mode
b) Alternatively, you can add tonnes of battery capacity
A very large battery does not sag as much on acceleration. Larger wheels have a relativley small impact on range when the battery is massive.
4WD doubles your battery capacity so it helps alot. However, parallellng in any Mega battery would be the most effective range booster for large wheels. Its not just the amp hours that boosts your range, its the resilience to moments of voltage sag under acceleration.
Just before the snow and salt hit, I was able to do a few distance runs on Cloudwheels with 4WD. The range seemed significanlty better than 110 TB. Traveling top speed and flat out acceleration from every stop, my range was 15 km. That compares to about 8 km on TB110.
I know both figures are pretty low but in both cases the weather was cold and the rider gear and spare batteries added up to about 225 pounds and like I said it was top speed and full acceleration.
If I was riding to maximize range on the cloud wheels/4WD the range would more than double – probably 36 km. And If I was a lighter rider the range would probably well over 40 km.
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Material almost certainly affects range due to rolling resistance. Softer materials deform and absorb some of the forward motion, which slows you down, and thus the board needs to supply more energy to keep your speed constant. Rubber wheels have historically been far less efficient and wear far more quickly compared to regular urethane wheels, as much as 50% sometimes.
Also wheel diameter plays less of a role than you think. A larger wheel does indeed take more energy to get up to speed, but also takes less energy to maintain speed because of the increased moment of inertia from the heavier wheel, so it usually evens out. Think heavy flywheels or fidget spinners even. The mass on the outside lets it keep spinning for a very long time, and removing the mass causes it to slow down much more quickly.
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You are missing something. I’m talking about the impact that heavier accelleration loads have on the battery. You are talking about conservation of momentum. If you do jack rabbit starts in a gas powered vehicle, you get less fuel economy. The effect on a battery powered vehicle is much greater because heavy loads don’t just draw electrons from the battery faster…There is also a very deep voltage sag effect.
I can give you many examples of this. My nissan leaf has about 120 km of winter range on city streets. At highway speeds it drops to just over 40 kilometers. Rapid discharge from a lithium battery has a disproportionate impact on range.
As an electric skateboarder, you should see the same thing. Gentle acceleration compared to hard accelleration can make a 50% difference in range. Moderate speed vs top speed can also make a difference of 50% or more.
Putting larger diameter wheels on a direct drive skateboard produces acceleration loads that are x% higher where x = (diameter_A - diameter_B)/diameter_A. Those increased acceleration loads cause deep cycles of voltage sag that can greatly reduce range. The bigger the wheel and the harder you accelerate, the more rapidly the battery consumes its watt-hours.
I have three different sets of 74A TB wheels. 90mm, 100mm, 110mm. The diameter difference is 17%. (90mm vs 100 mm) and 34% (90mm vs 110mm). 100mm wheels reduce my range by about 20%. 110mm wheels reduce my range by at least 50%. Same PU compound. The only difference is wheel diameter.
Your thoughts on heavier wheels vs lighter wheels are about 50% correct. The additional energy to accelerate the additional rotational mass is conserved by the flywheel effect – but only if you never brake. The moment you brake you lose most of the stored energy. Regenerative braking is not 100% efficient especially with hard acceleration and hard braking.
For similar reasons, heavier riders get much lower range than lighter riders. Yes the enegy to accelerate the heavier rider is stored as momentum. However, in practce, the heavier rider runs out of battery much earlier.
Current generally goes down as RPMs go up. The range drop you’re seeing is due to exponential aerodynamic drag, not discharge.
Also not true, contact patch is significantly wider on the 110s (65mm vs 52mm, or about 20% larger).
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Yep. 2 wheels 1 rubber 1 thane, same diameter, rubber is losing every time.
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There is a trade off between soft comfortable wheels and durability. Original Revel kit wheels seem to last forever and still look brand new. I have 4 yrsr old revel kit/L3-x wheels with about 2000 km on them. They still look fresh out of the box. TB 74A wheels last a season. But there is a significant comfort difference.
Yep. Rubber is heavier and more comfortable then thane but hits range harder. Fortunately, you can have infinite amount of batteries on the revel kit. Cloud wheels are a good middle ground of comfort and range which is to their success but I’d be interested to try these new revel rubber wheels.
You are suggesting that the 3x range difference between Nissan Leaf traveling 50 kph and Nissan Leaf traveling 100 kph is due to wind resistance.
If that were true, a gas powered vehicles would also get three times difference in fuel economy when comparing 50 kph to 100 kph. Lets test that theory.
An Acura TSX gets 35.5 mpg at 65 mph (See Chart Below). Thats 104 kph. So according to your theory, the lower wind resistance at 50 kph should boost the Accura TSX fuel consuption by a factor of three and up to 106 mpg. Based on the implausibility of that type of fuel economy, you should conclude that wind resistance does not come close to explaining the huge range difference that an electric vehicle experiences between highway speeds and local roads.
25% wider but that does not explain a 40 to 50 percent range drop.
Larger diameter wheels reduce range on direct drive skateboards because they cause the battery voltage to crash under acceleration loads that are significanlty higher. 17% higher for 100 mm wheels. 34% higher for 110mm wheels.
An extra 12 mm of contact patch would have a very small effect on range.
@frankthedragon is right, the Cloudwheels are sucking range because of increased rolling resistance, aka wh/mile. That’s just how it works. It’s not just a diameter thing. You could ride 105mm cloudwheels and have worse range than 110mm torqueboards. Easily. Diameter and the amp draw matters but in the end, if you rode a constant speed on both wheels the cloudwheels would have less range
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