When I first started. There weren’t any instructions. I melted wheel cores, blew up ESC’s, swelled batteries, broke belts, and ate pavement. But now… there is so much knowledge in the forum from so many peeps building. So what are the current pros and cons. I don’t see why someone could not build a DIY cheaper than a comparable store bought.
Why do you love your DIY, and why do you hate it?
…thats kind of the point? Unless you’re counting the endless hours you put into the builds, then its definatly more expensive then a prebuilt.
Pro: DIY is fun. Learning and sharing is fun.
Making something great and inspire others is a great feeling.
Con: DIY can be expensive
Pros-
Personal and unique
ability to tear down and put back without customer service
fun & rewarding
always learning
good conversations start when you said yeah its got a motor and yes i built it
Cons-
money
sometime you just want shit to work and it dosnt
addiction to the game
DIY cannot beat prebuilt in value under $1k imo
DIY mostly can only be cheaper if you have all the tools to build pretty much everything yourself
Pros of diy: 40mph lol
Cons of diy: no lunch money
Diy is not worth it on the low end.
prebuilts are more reliable (good to have when diy’s are on the bench)
diy’s take a lot of time to build especially if its your first
expensive until you have all the basic parts (soldering iron. solder, wires etc…) and then if you build a board with no mistakes it can be cheaper
diy is time consuming
the information isnt so easy to attain and is very spread out throughout the forums
your diy expectation rarely ever meets up to reality
(i’m never all the why nots everything else is a yes)
i started with prebuilt boards close to 3 years ago, and while nowadays the prebuilt does perform pretty well, there are just things that DIY board are better. i thought i would share my thoughts below as a noob:
Pros for prebuilt, i’d say first would be, buy and ride, its ready to ride the moment u open the box, for those that don’t want to mess with different hardwares that goes into a DIY board. they might not have the knowledge but want to have a taste of PEV, or they’ve seen people riding and think its pretty cool, so they buy one.
Cons for prebuilt, if the board breaks, u either send it in for service, buy a new board or fix it urself, some don’t like to mess with things or they don’t have the time to do so, so it doesn’t leave them with much choice.
Pros for DIY, well…u can customize it to the exact way u like it, from hardware to software. that pretty much covers everything. as long as u have the knowledge to do so. Also, u have a huge community here to help with all sort of stuff. prebuilt board have facebook page that doesn’t allow u to post problem of brands 
Cons for DIY, bunch of tools and material required, that can be costly from the start. different basic knowledge is needed to make things work. some stuff are basically trial and error, result in hours wasted or extra parts that doesn’t fit together, so more money spent if not carefully planned everything. Also, it will become an addiction (pros and cons at the same time)
others can also add on to what i said, and there is no TL:DR 
You forgot brakes. In my experience and opinion; prebuilts have brakes that are not suitable for their top speeds,especially if you ride in traffic.
I like how fast my diy can emergency stop if needed
yea, i specifically did not mentioned stuff like acceleration / brakes / top speed…etc, as those are pretty obvious that a DIY will perform much better in any regards, that’s why i said DIY can be customized to exactly how the user want it to be, prebuilt is only speed mode 1 2 3, and that’s it. 
hardly a competition there
I also like strong brakes that can throw me off
Pros of diy: you can make basically anything you want.
Cons of diy: YOU can MAKE basically ANYTHING you want.
I only mentioned it for anyone reading this trying to decide between them. Something about hobbywing ESCs makes them not able to stop fast enough to be considered safe in traffic imo
as much as having strong brakes, people should learn to keep a safe distance and also not going super mega uber fast with traffic 
Also, wear safety gear
I think the only board with that power right now is maybe the exway atlas 4wd
Ive got a guess.
I suspect it’s because they dont program their boards to abuse it’s electronics like we do. A (reputable) pre-built company is going to do their best to engineer their boards to spec for all it’s components, which means not allowing the board to generate massive braking current that would be way over-spec for the wires, ESC, cells, BMS, etc.
In DIY we say “I would rather hurt my batteries a little bit with too much braking current then not have enough brakes to stop in time.” But when engineering a product for mass production, that kind of abuse is not acceptable, because the company is potentially liable for the customer’s house burning down when they plug it in to charge.
Therefore they engineer everything to be within spec, so if something goes wrong at least they have the defense of “we built it as safe as possible.” That’s my guess anyway 
(Obviously I am aware that there are lots of shitty pre-built companies that do NOT engineer their boards well and use garbage cells, terrible battery construction methods, tiny wires, etc etc etc.)
Pros - Power, speed, customize everything.
Cons - Time 
Pros: built custom to your needs
programmable VESC to tune exactly the way you want
high speed, high power, high braking possible
Cons:
time required
tools required
knowledge required
waiting for parts required (especially for forgotten part/screwed up part)
not as clean
more expensive for sub $1k builds
Pro: everything a production board can do a diy can do that and more.
Can be cheaper, faster, more reliable, etc.
Cons: the industry for making us think they hold some kinda key.
Yup. This is exactly it. Solution is better tech overall.
I took the hybrid approach.
My first build was completely diy, and it was fun and challenging and rewarding.
I could always fix it, and it still runs.
My current board was bought (cheaply) and I am slowing replacing / upgrading parts and personalizing it.
The big Pros: I can still ride everyday while I do this
I can replace the parts I don’t like the performance of and keep the rest
If I mess up the diy, I have “stock” parts to put back on until I figure it out
Cons: The quality of the original parts is questionable, at best -it was engineered to turn a profit
Some foundational decisions are not what I would have chose (ie. 10mm axels, motor mounts)
Can’t really put that “Built not Bought” sticker on there (yet) - so there is a missing pride factor
All-in-all this is the route that I chose this time around but I also have pretty low “performance” requirements compared to many others. Most important to me, I need my board to not be on the shelf waiting on parts for weeks or months on end, I need reliability and, if anything else, range. In order to achieve that I’ll end up replacing everything eventually, but for now - I ride everyday while I scope out parts in my off-time.
Some of the folks on here are absolute artists…and I envy their abilities to create wonderment from scratch. They end up with one-of-a-kind builds simply cannot be bought.
Edited for illiteracy