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Inmotion & Solowheel


OliverH

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1 hour ago, meepmeepmayer said:

I believe Inmotion are like Trump voters.

They thought if they ally with the bad guy and endure his more wacky sides/pretend these do not exist, they get spared or even get some "trickle down". Instead, they (predictably) got scammed like everyone else, probably the worst.

They effectively killed their US market. Who buys a 1500+ V8, even if they manage to ban other wheels (I have my doubts) that's a very hard sell as soon as people start researching. Good luck getting these on Amazon without 90% negative reviews, e.g. Also, who buys these crazy overpriced original Solowheels when even the overpriced V8 is a much better offering now? It's just stupid from every angle. Only explanation I have is that Chen is a vindictive baby and Inmotion thought they would get away with a deal with the devil.

Lol the Trump analogy is gold. But also, I'm now looking at Shane Chen as the "Martin Shkreli" of EUC. That's NOT a good place to be in. AhM .. That means "America Hates Martin" NOT "Amps per Minute" :P.

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1 minute ago, fearedbliss said:

But also, I'm now looking at Shane Chen as the "Martin Shkreli" of EUC.

A bit different given Martin increased the HIV/AIDS drug by a whopping 5000%. Thank God he did not buy Inmotion as the V8 would sell for $50,000! 

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18 minutes ago, Rehab1 said:

I can think of other methods but we first need to see what @Jason McNeil has to say.

I meant no malicious campaign, simply telling the truth. Maybe "review-bombing" was a misleading term and sounded too harsh. But "Buy a Kingsong 16S, it has twice the battery capacity and a 50% stronger (safer) motor, is a much newer wheel with more features, and costs less" certainly would be a valid remark to add.

If at least Inmotion had made a new model (the V8 is how old now? 1.5 years or so?) that was price hiked, that would be something. But a (nevertheless great and 100% competitive) wheel from the EUC middle ages (figuratively), and that gets a price hike? That's just weak, and obviously not in the interest of the EUC market (so much for patents meant to encourage innovation).

Will certainly wait what Jason has to say, but what he wrote for now sounded even worse than I assumed. Then I mostly blamed Chen who at least seemed to have some justification, now it appears Inmotion are incompetent too, and Chen is less justified than it seemed. Maybe we should have foreseen that when they stopped developing competitive new models - both Solowheel and Inmotion. Might be a sign of a company going off the rails.

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37 minutes ago, fearedbliss said:

Lol the Trump analogy is gold. But also, I'm now looking at Shane Chen as the "Martin Shkreli" of EUC. That's NOT a good place to be in. AhM .. That means "America Hates Martin" NOT "Amps per Minute" :P.

I think the real analogy is the "Deal with the devil, didn't go as they thought it would" age old story. Trump is just a nice, current example that came to my mind;)

But who knows, maybe IM/Solowheel will get a monopoly and have huge financial success selling subpar (compared to the competition regarding features and price, no complaints about the V5/V8!) wheels. I don't believe it, there's only so much reality you can fight, which is why I predicted this would not turn out to be a good idea (not much has happened yet, after all).

Right now I'd like to know if everyone outside the US is safe from this. The Solowheel branded hoverboard (at least they seem to have given up on their counterproductive hovertrax name) in France is a bit worrying in this regard.

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Outside looking in, I really don't think InMotion [proper] had a choice here.

InMotion Technologies was backed by several rounds of investments funding, including the most recent and largest $17M Series B funding by Tiantu Capital in 2014. (similar to the XiaoMi backing of Ninebot/Segway)

Investors want Return On Investment (ROI), i.e. to make money $$$. They are most likely not anywhere nearly as emotionally invested in the product (EUC) as the founders (InMotion) or the customers (us) are.

So, in return for the backers' investment in InMotion Technologies, they were facing a very potentially expensive legal battle against Shane Chen / Inventist (who, by the way, is backed by the billionaire NBA Mavericks owner Mark Cuban) in the patent troll capital of the world, the good 'ol US of A.

 

This really has the feeling that InMotion's backers are forcing InMotion to cut their losses on their EUC I.P. (collecting their peanuts from the Inventist partnership), and refocus their efforts to make back the investor's money in their e-kickboard scooters line (which they've been currently doing) in a market that does not seem to have a big fat patent troll the likes of a Shane Chen / Inventist.

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I though giving a certain demographic privelaged status was something favored by Democrats. :)

This is much like Tesla being excluded from certain states legally instead of competively. I can see a worst case scenario of EUC that aren't SoloWheel being confiscated in the USA as contraband goods.

I thought the EUC was invented around or before WWII, and wasn't the first working prototype that self balanced made in the 1970's?

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I am so confused as to what company owns the rights to self balancing vehicles. Segway was suing Inventist last year because when Chen developed the Solowheel he had full knowledge of the Segway's 230 individual patents and acted with willful blindness to their existence! Now Inventist is suing to prevent Gotway and Kingsong wheels from entering the US! 

I hope @Jason McNeil can enlighten us on the validity of Chen's maladroit court filing! 

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6 hours ago, houseofjob said:

So, in return for the backers' investment in InMotion Technologies, they were facing a very potentially expensive legal battle against Shane Chen / Inventist (who, by the way, is backed by the billionaire NBA Mavericks owner Mark Cuban) in the patent troll capital of the world, the good 'ol US of A.

That is super ironic since Mark Cuban is not a fan of patents, see http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2015/11/10/a-patent-conversation-with-mark-cuban/id=63090/ .

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Chen is a hypocrite and an advantage-ist.

He didn't invent any of this; he just saw a door of opportunity to copy and package Segway technology into better products / packaging (SoloWheel, then Hovertrax), with slightly better marketing and calling it an invention.

And he's been hiding behind the broken US patent system, along with taking advantage of the original, pre-acquisition Segway's ineptitude in defending their IP; all so that Chen and Inventist can corner the US market for self-balancing tech.

But now, hopefully, with XiaoMi's continued backing, Ninebot/Segway will continue it's quest in out-patent-trolling the patent troll, something the original Segway was too inept and under-funded to do in the first place. (ironic because Ninebot was technically an infringer as well, before they bought the original Segway IP and became the original patent holder)

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Just to give you an idea of how long these kind of patent wars can stifle innovation, the fastening system for Velcro was patented in 1958. For the next 20 years it was only used in a handful of applications because the licensing cost was high. Then the patent expired in 1978 and in the 1980s manufacturers started using it in tons of places, shoes, clothing, wallets, you name it. For complex devices like EUCs there can be dozens of patents that have been claimed over the course of a decade or more, so it's hard to build something even close without the danger of infringing on some patent.

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1 minute ago, dmethvin said:

Just to give you an idea of how long these kind of patent wars can stifle innovation, the fastening system for Velcro was patented in 1958. For the next 20 years it was only used in a handful of applications because the licensing cost was high. Then the patent expired in 1978 and in the 1980s manufacturers started using it in tons of places, shoes, clothing, wallets, you name it. For complex devices like these there can be dozens of patents that have been claimed over the course of a decade or more, so it's hard to build something even close without the danger of infringing on some patent.

 

Awesome example that I did not readily know of, thanks!

In US music copyright law (which BTW is also pretty broken right now), the US government wanted to prevent the monopoly of the performance of a piece of music, i.e. covers of the same song performed by a different artist other than the original performing artist, so they carved it out as allowable, provided appropriate shares of any profit were paid back as royalty monies to the original songwriters of the music composition.

I really think US patent law needs something similar.

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I wonder which app u connect/register ur wheel when u buy this glide 2 or 3 ...

aliexpress still has the v8 apparently and I think that now speedy feet is selling it aswell.

While US law encourages US companies to be concerned by the patents, people from other countries are buying from Chinese companies and riding ..... 

after all, US riders are probably less than 10% of the euc world market, so non-US companies can still make more money than overpricing inventist.

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12 minutes ago, Pagsy said:

I wonder which app u connect/register ur wheel when u buy this glide 2 or 3 ...

aliexpress still has the v8 apparently and I think that now speedy feet is selling it aswell.

While US law encourages US companies to be concerned by the patents, people from other countries are buying from Chinese companies and riding ..... 

after all, US riders are probably less than 10% of the euc world market, so non-US companies can still make more money than overpricing inventist.

From my understanding, the app will be geolocked depending on the serial number of the wheel when you try to connect.  If the serial number is from a wheel that was not intended for the North American market, the app will not work with that wheel if it detects your location to be within North America.

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This is another item of concern for me with all this change. There is a chance I will move from the US to the UK in the next 12 months and want to still be able to access the app form the new location. I think @Jason McNeil had some ability to work with Inmotion regarding serial numbers and geolocation based app access as he has fixed access problems before for US riders who couldn't use the app. I was hoping/expecting that come time to move he may be able to help me gain UK app access for my US wheel although I never checked this prior to purchase. Now eWheels is losing selling rights in the US he may not have that ability anymore. I really don't want to have to use a VPN to use the app and as I understand it Android based alternatives such as WheelLog don't work with Inmotion wheels.

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1 hour ago, RichieV said:

From my understanding, the app will be geolocked depending on the serial number of the wheel when you try to connect.  If the serial number is from a wheel that was not intended for the North American market, the app will not work with that wheel if it detects your location to be within North America.

Even now there is a geolock on the V8...

But you can easy hack/crack it...make your wheel adjustments and then use a third party app for daily use!

So that will not prevent Solo-Motion from outside US buys! They shot themself in the foot with this move!

Buyers which will just be a little bit informed about whats happening will go and do their sale through Europe or even Chinese sellers! Receiving the exact same wheel for 2/3 or less of the price!

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1 hour ago, WARPed1701D said:

This is another item of concern for me with all this change. There is a chance I will move from the US to the UK in the next 12 months and want to still be able to access the app form the new location. I think @Jason McNeil had some ability to work with Inmotion regarding serial numbers and geolocation based app access as he has fixed access problems before for US riders who couldn't use the app. I was hoping/expecting that come time to move he may be able to help me gain UK app access for my US wheel although I never checked this prior to purchase. Now eWheels is losing selling rights in the US he may not have that ability anymore. I really don't want to have to use a VPN to use the app and as I understand it Android based alternatives such as WheelLog don't work with Inmotion wheels.

Dont worry...there is/was just a lock on chinese market units..US or Europe makes no difference!

And even when, this types of market restrictions normally dont work very well, there are some ways to even have the chinese v8 working with the app....

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7 minutes ago, KingSong69 said:

Dont worry...there is/was just a lock on chinese market units..US or Europe makes no difference!

 Awesome news. Thanks for sharing that. I thought the app locking was on a country by country level, not simply China and 'Rest of the World'. This has again helped allay my concerns. I still hope US app users aren't forced to use a SoloWheel branded app. That would be a constant reminder of all this bulls**t.

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6 minutes ago, HETPE3B said:

So in another words it is highly NOT recommended to purchase V8 from Alixpress?

On aliexpress the sellers -or some of them- are selling the international version! Which can use the app!

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10 minutes ago, HETPE3B said:

So in another words it is highly NOT recommended to purchase V8 from Alixpress?

If you do you will need to use a VPN to spit your internet connection out in the China region to use the Inmotion app for adjustments and monitoring. With eWheels now out the picture for US based purchases you may want to look at SpeedyFeet in the UK who has just started stocking the V8 and according to @KingSong69 should work with the app anywhere outside of China..

I still need to research it but I do not know of a working alternative for Inmotion wheels to the official app (for Android anyway) for speed and mileage monitoring. Wheellog was being updated but I didn't find any info that suggested it was working properly in the end and now think the app has been retired from active development. I could be wrong though as I've only just started searching threads for this info.

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