V11 Cutout - User Error - Inmotion FTW

[gon2fast]

I just checked a notification from the EUCO site a short while ago and another rider is reporting a abnormal V11 "cut-out". This rider is reporting that his wheel cut out during normal braking and will no longer power on after the incident.

Reporting this in the case that there is a larger issue we are not aware of yet.

I am a first batch V11 owner and have full faith in my wheel under normal operating constrains.

[Unventor]

In general not talking V11 or Inmotion, I think it is odd that we don't hear more about cutout or malfunction wheels than we do. I guess it comes down to people upgrade wheels fast due to technology still moves forward fast. 

That said I am trusting my 1st batch V11 much more than my KS16X. However I am trying to restrain my reaction with new pads and pedals as it is cold here. I though I didn't push it hard yet I hit almost 3000w for max output. I had no idea what created this spike. Maybe me clearing a crossing or getting up to cruise speed (40ish kmh). 

It come down to I don't trust me self as much as I trust my V11. It is so each to get comfortable and not realising speed and demand on the wheel. 

Given the right or wrong (depending on how you view this) condition it is still possible to reach high number. In summer time I think my highest output so far is about 4000ish w. My average out is normally in between 350-475w. Lately about 420w most of the times. Another valut is my average wh/km it was 16 wh/km in the start now is around 19wh/km. To me these numbers combined tell me I am tapping more into the V11 power. 

[ElectriQ User]

15 hours ago, gon2fast said:

I just checked a notification from the EUCO site a short while ago and another rider is reporting a abnormal V11 "cut-out". This rider is reporting that his wheel cut out during normal braking and will no longer power on after the incident.

Reporting this in the case that there is a larger issue we are not aware of yet.

I am a first batch V11 owner and have full faith in my wheel under normal operating constrains.

He had a cut-out/off on cold weather or warm/hot weather? Heavy guy? V11 is from 1ts, 2nd or 3rd batch?

[EUChristian]

8 hours ago, ElectriQ User said:

He had a cut-out/off on cold weather or warm/hot weather? Heavy guy? V11 is from 1ts, 2nd or 3rd batch?

I would not push this motor in the winter. 

[supercurio]

On 11/17/2020 at 10:07 AM, Inmotion Global said:

Why Joshua was misleading of didn't hear the alarm or tiltback?

The gap between the alarms is 5S. The first alarm happen at 37.5 km/h. In the next 2s, the pedal tilts around 7.9 degree(Before the alarm is 4 degree). The accleration to the final cutout speed is pretty fast that even not cross the alarm gap time yet. 

Hi @Inmotion Global! Congratulations on the quality of the analysis and handling of the issue.

I believe however that you are missing a key takeaway from this crash and associated data.

As happy V10F rider (4.5 months / 2300 km) I found it very safe so far despite riding it often close to top speed at all state of charges.However your message highlights a dangerous apparent gap in Inmotion's safety implementation: the 5 seconds delay between alarms.
I always back off when hearing an alarm but assumed that the alarm would ring continuously as long as I'm asking too much.

But instead, this 5 seconds gap means that I could overpower, overlean and crash close to max speed without warning my V10F just like @EUChristian did during the alarm gap.

Despite his humble approach to the event now, given your insight @Inmotion Global, I believe that @EUChristianwas mostly right blaming the wheel for not alerting him before throwing him off: indeed it did not alert him on time, waiting instead for 5 seconds - and that was too late.

Note that all most riders used to wheels from different brands will have the expectation that the alarm keep ringing as long as the alarm conditions are met.
A gap of multiple seconds between beeps is likely to continue leading to more crashes for them.

Sure tiltback up to -8° is another mechanism, but we all know that when riding an Inmotion wheel, the rider get used to a large amount of gradual (soft) tiltback increasing with speed. I personally ride most of the time at speeds below the maximum but still high enough to be tilted backward softly.
I wish this soft tiltback could be disabled on my V10F because it creates:

• foot fatigue
• instability on bumps
• crucially: difficulty to notice the hard tiltback when it happens, and identify it as true warning.

I would strongly suggest these 2 changes to improve safety of the V10/V10F and V11:

1. Allow alarm to be continuous when reaching alarm conditions: no time gap, no delay.
2. Reduce intensity and spread of soft tiltback or allow users to disable it. The goal is to un-train users to ride the tiltback and make hard tilt-back easy to identify and respect as safety mechanism.

I hope you'll consider this proposal with your product team and engineers.
Looking forward to a firmware update on my V10F implementing these changes, today I feel less confident riding it knowing I can't really rely on its alarms.

[Ádám Szitás]

I think you are already doing it wrong and need a faster wheel that suits your needs better if you are riding the alarms...even soft. I never worried about cutoffs as a possible problem at any given time because of overpowering simply because I don't ride the alarms but barely below that. Just my opinion of course, most people will disagree.

[gon2fast]

On 11/22/2020 at 6:29 AM, ElectriQ User said:

He had a cut-out/off on cold weather or warm/hot weather? Heavy guy? V11 is from 1ts, 2nd or 3rd batch?

The rider is from the SF Bay Area so not a cold weather environment. His issue was a board failure. Not sure what batch EUCO is on (that is where the wheel was purchased from).

[Over9k]

This sounds scary, this is the one I’m getting ready to buy, granted I’m probably going to be cruising at around 20-25mph (32.9km/h 40.23km/h) I hope you recover soon.

[AtlasP]

This just in: most riders still clueless about how self-balancing vehicles work, call for option to disable tiltback while simultaneously complaining that warnings/alarms aren't obvious enough. More at 11.

(If you're constantly riding the tiltback, you're already in the wrong.)

Edited November 23, 2020 by AtlasP

[supercurio]

24 minutes ago, AtlasP said:

This just in: most riders still clueless about how self-balancing vehicles work, call for option to disable tiltback while simultaneously complaining that warnings/alarms aren't obvious enough. More at 11.

(If you're constantly riding the tiltback, you're already in the wrong.)

Although you seem to target both me and my previous message and despite a not particularly constructive approach I'll still attempt to describe, hopefully better the point developed earlier.

Taking as example Kingsong approach to Tiltback on KS-16X and Inmotion's approach on the V10F.

Kingsong 16X

• Soft tiltback: occurs only a few km/h to the max speed of the wheel, noticeable compared to pedals staying very levelled especially in hard mode - battery level dependent
• Hard tiltback: very clear wheel intent, impossible to miss, possible to cancel immediately by slowing down.

Results:

• It is easy to ride below max speed by identifying the soft tiltback.
• Soft tiltback is not intrusive during general riding
• Hard tiltback is effective as safety mechanism because vastly different in behaviour and intensity to any other riding condition, where pedals remain level

Inmotion V10F

• Soft tiltback: occurs very gradually from 30 km/h real/GPS to the max speed of the wheel - battery level dependent: hard to notice due to its slow and progressive occurrence.
• Hard tiltback: correspond to max speed alert: very clear if setting wheel's max speed tiltback below 30 km/h, can be missed if transitioning from max soft tiltback to hard tiltback.

Results:

• It is easy to ride significantly below max speed, if avoiding soft tiltback.
• Aside from low speeds suitable for trail riding or touring, typical commuting speeds - 30 km/h or more happen with pedals always being tilted back with varying intensity.
  Many V10 / V10F riders end up setting a permanent positive tilt angle of +1 to +2° to avoid discomfort and fatigue from riding with constant negative pedal tilt.
• Users are trained to ride with varying amount of tiltback on typical speeds safely handled by the wheel, most other PEVs or bicycles.
• Instead of a clear 0° levelled pedals to hard tiltback tilt change, a minor max-soft-tiltback to full-tiltback tilt change is easy to miss.

 

My point here is that a broad soft tiltback starting at speeds significantly lower than max speeds makes titlback generally less effective as an alert and safety mechanism.

Then on alarms, I am certain, despite your criticism,  that it should ring as long as the safety margin & speed conditions are met instead of being blocked by an arbitrary delay.

A 5 seconds delay is an absolute eternity: it's the time it takes Adam from Wrong Way to accelerate from 0 to 44 km/h on the V11.

 

[gon2fast]

It would be helpful to not advertise the top speed as the cruising speed.

Here is some conflicting information I found from a single response to a query of the V11 -

31MPH max speed

next section

Cruising Speed 34.1 MPH
(with Firmware Update)

If I were new to this hobby and saw the second stat I would assume that the V11 is more than capable of cruising at 34MPH, which it is not...

Point being is that the vendors and re-sellers are also contributing to this confusion

 

[supercurio]

4 minutes ago, gon2fast said:

It would be helpful to not advertise the top speed as the cruising speed.

Here is some conflicting information I found from a single response to a query of the V11 -

31MPH max speed

next section

Cruising Speed 34.1 MPH
(with Firmware Update)

If I were new to this hobby and saw the second stat I would assume that the V11 is more than capable of cruising at 34MPH, which it is not...

Point being is that the vendors and re-sellers are also contributing to this confusion

 

Ah yes eWheels is not doing its due diligence here - to name the source since they sold @EUChristian's wheel.

Definition of Cruising speed: "a speed for a particular vehicle, ship, or aircraft, usually somewhat below maximum, that is comfortable and economical."

According to eWheels:
V8F Cruising Speed: 21.7 MPH 😬
S18 Cruising Speed: 31 MPH 🧐
Nikola Cruising Speed: Cruising Speed 35-40 MPH *Theoretical, not recommend to use at max speed.
Veteran Sherman: Max Potential Speed ~45 MPH

Ironically, the wheels handling higher speeds better are the ones coming with warnings or described conservatively. 

[EUChristian]

1 hour ago, supercurio said:

Although you seem to target both me and my previous message and despite a not particularly constructive approach I'll still attempt to describe, hopefully better the point developed earlier.

Taking as example Kingsong approach to Tiltback on KS-16X and Inmotion's approach on the V10F.

Kingsong 16X

• Soft tiltback: occurs only a few km/h to the max speed of the wheel, noticeable compared to pedals staying very levelled especially in hard mode - battery level dependent
• Hard tiltback: very clear wheel intent, impossible to miss, possible to cancel immediately by slowing down.

Results:

• It is easy to ride below max speed by identifying the soft tiltback.
• Soft tiltback is not intrusive during general riding
• Hard tiltback is effective as safety mechanism because vastly different in behaviour and intensity to any other riding condition, where pedals remain level

Inmotion V10F

• Soft tiltback: occurs very gradually from 30 km/h real/GPS to the max speed of the wheel - battery level dependent: hard to notice due to its slow and progressive occurrence.
• Hard tiltback: correspond to max speed alert: very clear if setting wheel's max speed tiltback below 30 km/h, can be missed if transitioning from max soft tiltback to hard tiltback.

Results:

• It is easy to ride significantly below max speed, if avoiding soft tiltback.
• Aside from low speeds suitable for trail riding or touring, typical commuting speeds - 30 km/h or more happen with pedals always being tilted back with varying intensity.
  Many V10 / V10F riders end up setting a permanent positive tilt angle of +1 to +2° to avoid discomfort and fatigue from riding with constant negative pedal tilt.
• Users are trained to ride with varying amount of tiltback on typical speeds safely handled by the wheel, most other PEVs or bicycles.
• Instead of a clear 0° levelled pedals to hard tiltback tilt change, a minor max-soft-tiltback to full-tiltback tilt change is easy to miss.

 

My point here is that a broad soft tiltback starting at speeds significantly lower than max speeds makes titlback generally less effective as an alert and safety mechanism.

Then on alarms, I am certain, despite your criticism,  that it should ring as long as the safety margin & speed conditions are met instead of being blocked by an arbitrary delay.

A 5 seconds delay is an absolute eternity: it's the time it takes Adam from Wrong Way to accelerate from 0 to 44 km/h on the V11.

 

I think you illuminated my situation very well here because I come from a Kingsong wheel and I think the gap in my learning how this wheel works comes in to play here. Inmotion is not inherently wrong but I do agree the alarm should be continuous. Also as you noted tiltback is different between the two...and this is probably why I can't make my Kingsong 16s at top speed overlean without incredible force but here I simply "pushed" through the tilt. The Kingsong pushes back hard enough to catch you off guard slightly and force you to slow down. 

 

[ElectriQ User]

10 hours ago, gon2fast said:

The rider is from the SF Bay Area so not a cold weather environment. His issue was a board failure. Not sure what batch EUCO is on (that is where the wheel was purchased from).

The way the wheel stopped, without being forced, scares me. Recently I heard about something similar on another V11, without being pushed hard ...

[Unventor]

6 hours ago, supercurio said:

Although you seem to target both me and my previous message and despite a not particularly constructive approach I'll still attempt to describe, hopefully better the point developed earlier.

Taking as example Kingsong approach to Tiltback on KS-16X and Inmotion's approach on the V10F.

Kingsong 16X

• Soft tiltback: occurs only a few km/h to the max speed of the wheel, noticeable compared to pedals staying very levelled especially in hard mode - battery level dependent
• Hard tiltback: very clear wheel intent, impossible to miss, possible to cancel immediately by slowing down.

Results:

• It is easy to ride below max speed by identifying the soft tiltback.
• Soft tiltback is not intrusive during general riding
• Hard tiltback is effective as safety mechanism because vastly different in behaviour and intensity to any other riding condition, where pedals remain level

Inmotion V10F

• Soft tiltback: occurs very gradually from 30 km/h real/GPS to the max speed of the wheel - battery level dependent: hard to notice due to its slow and progressive occurrence.
• Hard tiltback: correspond to max speed alert: very clear if setting wheel's max speed tiltback below 30 km/h, can be missed if transitioning from max soft tiltback to hard tiltback.

Results:

• It is easy to ride significantly below max speed, if avoiding soft tiltback.
• Aside from low speeds suitable for trail riding or touring, typical commuting speeds - 30 km/h or more happen with pedals always being tilted back with varying intensity.
  Many V10 / V10F riders end up setting a permanent positive tilt angle of +1 to +2° to avoid discomfort and fatigue from riding with constant negative pedal tilt.
• Users are trained to ride with varying amount of tiltback on typical speeds safely handled by the wheel, most other PEVs or bicycles.
• Instead of a clear 0° levelled pedals to hard tiltback tilt change, a minor max-soft-tiltback to full-tiltback tilt change is easy to miss.

 

My point here is that a broad soft tiltback starting at speeds significantly lower than max speeds makes titlback generally less effective as an alert and safety mechanism.

Then on alarms, I am certain, despite your criticism,  that it should ring as long as the safety margin & speed conditions are met instead of being blocked by an arbitrary delay.

A 5 seconds delay is an absolute eternity: it's the time it takes Adam from Wrong Way to accelerate from 0 to 44 km/h on the V11.

 

I think you are missing a few very crucial points here. 

There are 2 ways to look at this. One it to use the finger of blame and start pointing (this will in the end now help anyone imo). Two is to learn from the information people share. And ride accordingly. Imo people should start taking responsibility of their actions. We have move into a culture that "I am not responsible as I did not do anything /know if this". 

Personally I think it is wrong to ride at max speed a wheel is designed for. Especially thinking this is safe no mater what. This is also why the max lift speed under no load makes absolutely no sense to me what so every. That is a paper number that means nothing as it doesn't take into consideration a lot of different things you have to as a rider. 

The big thing here is the need of power to maintain balance and we see again and again how people misjudge this need. 

Now I have had crashes too. I have posted about them here for other to know. I just still thing you need to respect wheels have a limitation it how it traction is and what happens when that is lost or when then selfbalansing mechanism cannot keep up. In the end if people really want speed an escooter build for speed would be safer as it cannot cutout like an EUC. Now there are others things that makes me choose an EUC but I am not riding for speed. 

On the note of brands. Each one do this differently. Saying one way is better than the other I just don't buy into. It comes down to you as a rider has a responsibility to learn how the machine you are riding is working. If you don't you can't operate it safely. 

Now I expect some will start arguing about my opinion here. As many don't want to be at fault. I chose to put this out here anyway. Simply because the blame pointing finger is a path I don't agree upon. Everyone should have the freedom of choise before you set out to ride your wheels. I really doubt someone forced you to ride at max speed all the time. 

[mrelwood]

7 hours ago, supercurio said:

My point here is that a broad soft tiltback starting at speeds significantly lower than max speeds makes titlback generally less effective as an alert and safety mechanism.

I fully agree. I never pushed my friend’s V10F to feel the tilt-back, but I’ve been pushing my V11 plenty. I haven’t noticed the soft tilt-back you describe.

5 hours ago, EUChristian said:

I simply "pushed" through the tilt

Apparently. And you expected it to behave exactly like your KS? Please, never EVER ride a GW!

Edited November 24, 2020 by mrelwood

[EUChristian]

4 hours ago, mrelwood said:

I fully agree. I never pushed my friend’s V10F to feel the tilt-back, but I’ve been pushing my V11 plenty. I haven’t noticed the soft tilt-back you describe.

Apparently. And you expected it to behave exactly like your KS? Please, never EVER ride a GW!

I have an Mten3. Great wheel. I'm guessing you mean the fast ones. 

[supercurio]

6 hours ago, Unventor said:

I think you are missing a few very crucial points here. 

There are 2 ways to look at this. One it to use the finger of blame and start pointing (this will in the end now help anyone imo). Two is to learn from the information people share. And ride accordingly. Imo people should start taking responsibility of their actions. We have move into a culture that "I am not responsible as I did not do anything /know if this". 

Hi @Unventor!
There's more than 2 ways to look at it 

3rd way: how could that be improved?

Safety on EUCs has a massive room for improvement, I would not consider that this is how things are and that's it, forever.
I mean, alarms, safety mechanisms and their behaviour are completely different between manufacturer and varying between models.

This inconsistency makes it hard for users to learn to ride EUCs safely. Standardisation would be beneficial, thorough documentation at the minimum.

That's why I'm requesting at the removal of this 5 second gap between alarms on Inmotion wheels.
It never happen to me but think of how many people face-planted without warning on Inmotion wheels (like V8), now: how many of these could have been because the wheel got overpowered during this 5 silent seconds yet couldn't alert the rider?
How many crashed because of this delay? I'd say at least one, right here.

I see a potential way to make things better, a low hanging fruit even.

Edited November 24, 2020 by supercurio

[supercurio]

5 hours ago, mrelwood said:

I fully agree. I never pushed my friend’s V10F to feel the tilt-back, but I’ve been pushing my V11 plenty. I haven’t noticed the soft tilt-back you describe.

Apparently. And you expected it to behave exactly like your KS? Please, never EVER ride a GW!

Good to know the V11 doesn't have a broad, progressive soft tilt-back like the V10/V10F!

 

Gotway wheels beep continuously if pushed beyond the limit, correct?

I'm speculating that @EUChristian, from experience expected the same on his Inmotion - and since it stopped beeping assumed that it was fine accelerating further.
I would do the same, could never have guessed. It's the first time I read it anywhere and is not part of any documentation.

Edited November 24, 2020 by supercurio

[RockyTop]

The GotWay seems to beep/ chirp instantly and stop chirping just as fast. I get lots of half beeps and little chirps all the time when I am pushing the wheel hard. When I get the beep I instantly back off and only get a little chirp. No 5 second delay. 

[supercurio]

On 11/15/2020 at 6:33 PM, EUChristian said:

I received no alarm (which I have received before at 55kph and it is obnoxious in my own voice) and no tilt back.  No wobble occurred, it simply stopped working and threw me forward.  I landed on the top/back of my head and evidently after rolling a bit I slid down the road on my back.

 

On 11/17/2020 at 10:07 AM, Inmotion Global said:

The gap between the alarms is 5S. The first alarm happen at 37.5 km/h. In the next 2s, the pedal tilts around 7.9 degree(Before the alarm is 4 degree). The accleration to the final cutout speed is pretty fast that even not cross the alarm gap time yet. 

 

To put in perspective, here is an annotated version of @Inmotion Global's excellent graph.

What you can see is that the user reacted to the alarm as expected - in brown.
Then everything that went wrong was within this long 5 second gap during which the user was deprived of the expected auditory feedback from the wheel - in red.

Hopefully anyone can see on this graph why this 5 second delay until the next alarm makes it an unreliable and dangerous alarm implementation.

Since users can record their own alert sounds in the app, there are additional challenges to make the alarm continuous compared to a simple beeper, but it is certainly feasible and will contribute to making Inmotion wheels significantly safer.

 

In short, it's pretty straightforward and IMHO the direct reason why @EUChristian experienced a cutout.

[Planemo]

47 minutes ago, supercurio said:

Hopefully anyone can see on this graph why this 5 second delay until the next alarm makes it an unreliable and dangerous alarm implementation.

WTH? Why would the designers want any delay at all? I am clearly missing something because surely you want an alarm to be on as soon as you hit the danger zone, whether you come out of it, come back into it or even stay in it throughout.

[tonybt06]

55 minutes ago, Planemo said:

WTH? Why would the designers want any delay at all? I am clearly missing something because surely you want an alarm to be on as soon as you hit the danger zone, whether you come out of it, come back into it or even stay in it throughout.

The question is when is the start of the 5 seconds alarm gap. Is it at the beginning or the end of the previous alarm? If the count starts at the beginning, the gap is actually 5s-alarm_length. 

With that said, I agree that a critical alarm should get triggered immediately if the condition is met. A lot can happen during 5 seconds or even 1 second.

[supercurio]

16 minutes ago, tonybt06 said:

The question is when is the start of the 5 seconds alarm gap. Is it at the beginning or the end of the previous alarm? If the count starts at the beginning, the gap is actually 5s-alarm_length. 

With that said, I agree that a critical alarm should get triggered immediately if the condition is met. A lot can happen during 5 seconds or even 1 second.

Good point, in the graph I assumed from @Inmotion Global's description that an alarm can be triggered up to every 5s regardless of its duration.

On Inmotion wheels the alarm is a sound file played in its entirely - unlike other wheels where the beep sequence can be interrupted by backing off quickly, as @RockyTop mentioned.

Since they're loud (good) and long (depends), it contributes to making the alarms kind of annoying or embarrassing to some. I know someone who disabled it on his V10F for this reason, relying only on the hard tilt-back instead (bad idea IMO)

Being less annoying could be a reason why they added this 5s delay, or maybe an alarm can be up to 5s long hence the hardcoded gap.
I'll try.

Edited November 24, 2020 by supercurio

[mike_bike_kite]

1 hour ago, Planemo said:

WTH? Why would the designers want any delay at all? 

I expect they just want the previous alarm to finish. If you don't have any gap then how do you know you're listening to a one beep alarm that's just being repeated endlessly because you've got to the first beep speed or is it the 4 beep alarm being endlessly repeated because you've got to the 4 beep speed ie:

beep [no_gap] beep [no_gap] beep [no_gap] beep [no_gap] beep [no_gap] beep [no_gap] beep [no_gap] beep [no_gap] 

beep beep beep beep [no_gap] beep beep beep beep [no_gap] beep beep beep beep [no_gap] beep beep beep beep [no_gap] 

[edit]I typed too slow  

Edited November 24, 2020 by mike_bike_kite