Electric Skateboards – What is this new thing?

First of all, they’re not that new. Electric skateboards have been around almost as soon as skateboards were invented. The first ones used either petrol motors or big lead acid battery powered electric motors.

Things have come a long way since then with so many advancements in technology that electric skateboards are a huge step up from their predecessors.

Here is an electric skateboard in simple terms.

An electric skateboard or ‘Eboard’ is very simple in principle. It’s similar to a normal skateboard but with a battery and motor strapped on usually controlled via a wireless handheld remote.

So there you go, that’s it. Thanks for reading our blog about electric skateboards.

Just kidding. Here’s a few of the important elements of an electric skateboard:

Battery

Typically, batteries are Lithium Ion or Lithium Ion polymer, just like you would find in a laptop. Some bigger off-road electric skateboards do still use lead acid batteries which aren’t particularly great and weigh a ton!

Motor

Soon after the first skateboards appeared on the scene, people were strapping motors to them and back then they were typically using model aeroplane motors to power their electric skateboards. Nowadays, electric skateboards have specific brushless motors which have moved on from brushed motors.

Here’s the techy bit…

A brushless motor loses the brushes and the commutator. And the locations of the magnets and windings are reversed: The magnets are on the conventional motor shaft and the copper windings of the armature are fixed and surround the shaft. Instead of brushes and a commutator, a small circuit board coordinates the energy delivery to the windings.

Here’s the simplified version…

Brushless motors are more efficient, more powerful and can run at varying speeds, rather than on or off. Perfect for an electric skateboard.

The motor is mounted on a bracket to the rear hub and powers the rear wheel via a drive belt on to a sprocket.

PCB

Printed Circuit Board. The green bit with shiny solder in the back of your calculator you destroyed at school. This controls the motor function, regulates the battery and is basically the brain of the electric skateboard. There are different types with varying degrees of complication and functions but they’re relatively basic compared to a laptop or drone.

Wireless Connection

This is kind of all tied up with the PCB but most electric skateboards have a wireless controller which connects to the board via radio or Bluetooth. There are a few companies with wired connections still but there is nothing discreet about that really.

The battery and PCB are usually encases within a box which typically hangs under the electric skateboard. We have the Dual Max-Eboard which has all of this integrated in to the deck. But this does mean you lose the flexibility in the deck.

So they’re here and here to stay- electric skateboards are the future of urban transport (or so we think anyway). They’re relatively simple and easy to use. Why not try one out?

Check them out here…Eboards