Gotway Safety Advisory (video by Marty Backe)

[meepmeepmayer]

Ehm... WUT?

Begode recommends crazy things due to the apparent battery fire tendiencies of their latest wheels

Does anybody have more background on this? Where was the statement originally posted?

Full video with @Marty Backe's comments, the screenshot is from the video.

 

[null]

Heh.

1: many EUC and charger manuals say not to charge outdoors. I suppose because of rain, dew etc. Do Begode products fare well the rain?

5: WTF, in their dreams. As for fast charging none of their EUCs permit it, so not happening anyway.

7: If you have any hope at all to extinguish the battery fire, yes. Else powder will help extinguishing the plastic and surroundings.

(A few of these points (especially #5) make it sound like they have no clue what they are doing..)

Edited July 31, 2021 by null

[meepmeepmayer]

The worst thing: it doesn't sound like they even know why the fires happen.

"Heyo, just charge outside and buy new batteries faster than yours will explode! It's not like we have any idea how to fix this kthxbye."

[yoos]

Looks more like an impossible set of rules to avoid fire-related lawsuits rather than insightful advice.

[Heyzeus]

So is this aimed at their most recent wheels or are they trying to say all past wheels even going back the the acm2(my wheel) days.

57 minutes ago, null said:

5: WTF, in their dreams. As for fast charging none of their EUCs permit it, so not happening anyway.

Right, like that is not an acceptable solution.  Oh hey just spend 3/5ths the price of your wheel every year to get new batteries guys because we don't know how to engineer our product to not blow up.  Did they lose key team members from the "Keep the wheel from blowing up" team to veteran and so now the people from the "Make sure the wheel puts out sick beats and lights up like an rgb pc" team are in charge of battery safety and reliability.

If they want you to replace any battery older than a year then what they are essentially saying is that "NONE of our recent wheels can be considered safe or reliable and any existing wheel currently being sold falls in that category".

Additionally this says to me:  You can't trust the quality control and safety engineering processes at gotway so don't buy any new wheel that comes out from gotway until they have gone at least 1-2 years with no battery fires on any of their new wheels.

If people did that though, Gotway will go out of business, which would be their fault, not the riders problem.  Broken axles and board overheating/shorting out under high stress or cooling issues are one thing that can be fixed but how do you convince users to buy what could be a time delay bomb.

The larger issue though besides the whole "safety and someone's house may burn down and kill them problem" is that it only takes one of these poorly engineered wheels catching fire in the middle of a class lecture hall/starbucks/grocery store/etc and being posted to tik tok for these devices to just be blanket banned indoors everywhere a la hoverboards.

 

28 minutes ago, yoos said:

Looks more like an impossible set of rules to avoid fire-related lawsuits rather than insightful advice.

I wonder if they set the time at "Older than one year" because that would put you outside the warranty period and so anyone buying from ewheels or elsewhere that offers one year warranties(that they have negotiated with gotway) wouldn't be able to replace your battery under warranty and so the user(or ewheels) has to eat the cost and gotway avoids any payments to ewheels for battery replacement under warranty.

If I'm Jason this would result in me no longer selling any gotway wheels and sending unsold wheels back to gotway for refund.  How do you sell any existing wheel that's currently assembled and in your warehouse when the manufacturer says "any of those wheels should have their batteries replaced in a year"

Edited July 31, 2021 by Heyzeus

[meepmeepmayer]

2 minutes ago, Heyzeus said:

So is this aimed at their most recent wheels or are they trying to say all past wheels even going back the the acm2(my wheel) days.

The old batteries are fine. They were the best battery packs of them all.

Seems to be something about the/some 21700 type cells.

[mhpr262]

Buy a new battery every year, what are they smoking over there? And they put that in an official announcement. I cant think of a way to put yourself out of business any faster.

 

I dont think the fires are the fault of the cells, there must be  millions of them in use all over the world without any issues. More likely the Gotway/Begode engineers were told to save a couple of bucks manufacturing the wheels and cut a couple more corners with the battery pack/charging management than they should have.

Edited July 31, 2021 by mhpr262

[AtlasP]

1 hour ago, Heyzeus said:

If I'm Jason this would result in me no longer selling any gotway wheels

Actually, for those keeping track, eWheels hasn't stocked any new Begode release in 9-10 months (since the RS last October)--basically coming up on a full year!

In that time, Begode has had at least 4 high profile launches--including the EX, EX.N, Monster Pro, and T3--none of which have appeared on eWheels.com despite being available through multiple other western resellers (including EUCO and Alien Rides).

Between this fact and the rumors of eWheels looking to secure their own battery pack manufacturer for use inside Begode wheels (which has likely been delayed by the current battery crisis), I think it's highly likely that eWheels will be stopping selling any wheels made by Begode that contain Begode-manufactured battery packs.

[Chriull]

13 minutes ago, AtlasP said:

I think it's highly likely that eWheels will be stopping selling any wheels made by Begode that contain Begode-manufactured battery packs.

I assume they have more in depth information and experienced consultants, but from what was shown on ecodrifts teardowns the newest begode wheels do not have the placement of motor wires, mosfets and the main capacitors directly below the li ion cells anymore? Which could distress the situation hopefully?

And some ?very high rated? fuse in the battery wires.

Afai got it gotway was stating very proudly to have _no_ restrictions by fuses, firmware, etc... (Which by the way could not be true - without low speed current firmware restrictions every wheel would blow up..) 

But as they are a main player i hope they solve their problems - they got delisted already some times by main retailers and made it back again...

[AtlasP]

@Chriull- yeah, it's clear that batteries are just one part of the puzzle. I'm definitely curious what other changes ewheels' efforts might entail, for example to the wiring/etc., or if it will literally just be the battery packs.

[meepmeepmayer]

37 minutes ago, AtlasP said:

and the rumors of eWheels looking to secure their own battery pack manufacturer for use inside Begode wheels

Boy were they right about that

13 minutes ago, Chriull said:

but from what was shown on ecodrifts teardowns the newest begode wheels do not have the placement of motor wires, mosfets and the main capacitors directly below the li ion cells anymore?

Hmm maybe Begode do know what the problem is (just some hot wiring?). That would be good.

[Heyzeus]

3 hours ago, AtlasP said:

Between this fact and the rumors of eWheels looking to secure their own battery pack manufacturer for use inside Begode wheels (which has likely been delayed by the current battery crisis), I think it's highly likely that eWheels will be stopping selling any wheels made by Begode that contain Begode-manufactured battery packs.

Even if it didn't have a gotway battery pack and ewheels was sourcing their own batteries for these wheels...well...just the fact that your dealer had to go out of their way to find a supplier/alternate source of batteries for your wheels and go through the trouble of setting all the logistics up of getting them and installing them and testing and so on....well it speaks volumes about how terrible quality control/engineering is at gotway and at that point...why would I trust the rest of their engineering when it comes to the board or controller for long term reliability years down the line.

At that point...why not just go with someone else...I guess if you are in the market for an mcm5 or mten3 type wheel your options are slim to none which sucks but above that range other manufactures have competitive alternatives. 

Edit:

It really makes me a bit sad since I've enjoyed my fat little acm2 so much, would love to have some of the more recent power and amenities in my wheel even though I know gotway would never do a refresh.  Competition is good and I don't want to see Gotway go out of business and begone but stuff like this is gonna make people rightfully wary of buying their wheels.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Heyzeus

[Spaghetteh]

As a new rider who's thinking about getting a second wheel this month... this has me spooked and makes me want to avoid Gotway wheels all together. Which is a shame since they're so popular and it sounds like the nimbleness of one would pair well with my 18L. But charging outside isn't an option and I can't risk being responsible for a fire in my apartment building.

[meepmeepmayer]

32 minutes ago, Spaghatteh said:

As a new rider who's thinking about getting a second wheel this month... this has me spooked and makes me want to avoid Gotway wheels all together.

I was on the fence of ordering an RS HT the last few months, but this battery uncertainty is why I never did

[conecones]

It doesn’t look like the quality of Gotway’s recent releases have changed in any meaningful way so there’s no reason to take this statement to mean anything has changed at all.

Rather, I would wait for something like Ecodrift’s tear down before making a purchase decision, as these guys seem to know these wheels better than Gotway does…

In the meantime we should all just continue to enjoy our wheels and continue to be vigilant if you notice strange behaviour from your wheel (no matter the brand).

[shellac]

On 7/31/2021 at 3:50 PM, AtlasP said:

Actually, for those keeping track, eWheels hasn't stocked any new Begode release in 9-10 months (since the RS last October)--basically coming up on a full year!

In that time, Begode has had at least 4 high profile launches--including the EX, EX.N, Monster Pro, and T3--none of which have appeared on eWheels.com despite being available through multiple other western resellers (including EUCO and Alien Rides).

Between this fact and the rumors of eWheels looking to secure their own battery pack manufacturer for use inside Begode wheels (which has likely been delayed by the current battery crisis), I think it's highly likely that eWheels will be stopping selling any wheels made by Begode that contain Begode-manufactured battery packs.

The other possibility here is that since ewheels is the official Veteran distributor in the US, Begode themselves may have sensed an existential threat and decided to cut off ewheels as a way to discourage them (and others) from carrying their main competition. Playing some hardball with ewheels. It would seem out of character for them but just a thought. 

[AtlasP]

22 minutes ago, shellac said:

The other possibility here is that since ewheels is the official Veteran distributor in the US, Begode themselves may have sensed an existential threat and decided to cut off ewheels as a way to discourage them (and others) from carrying their main competition. Playing some hardball with ewheels. It would seem out of character for them but just a thought. 

A plausible scenario in a different market maybe, but I'm calling "no way in hell" in this case.

eWheels is the #1 distributer of EUCs in the world. If Begode is scared of competition with Veteran, the *last* thing they would do is cut off likely the largest vender of their wheels (particularly to the particular demographic of their ridership)--it would literally be a death sentence.

Also these business have shown they'll do business with anyone, they don't care at all, just as long as you buy the thing from them. The idea of them picking or denying customers based on any kind of ideological premise or loyalty is bananas based on what we've seen up until now. I just find it hard to believe in this case.

Edited August 2, 2021 by AtlasP

[shellac]

Yeah I agree that it’s exceedingly unlikely. I was posing it more as a theoretical. 

So it seems ewheels did the calculations and it didn’t make sense for them to carry the newer Begode releases. Maybe because of issues with the wheels needing support were cutting into profits, or they were worried about safety risks from the batteries. They did have a fire on that shipment of wheels. Maybe that’s the straw that broke the camels back. 

[Menace]

Seems like they just put out this warning to cover their butts in the case something goes wrong. I don't believe they've made any groundbreaking discoveries, they just decided "hey, we should probably put out this disclaimer/warning now", and that's fair enough. But it's nothing to freak out over.

Here are my thoughts. Some of them include an example of a similarly ridiculous warning found on other things in parentheses.

1. Nope, I'm charging indoors. Outdoors weather like hot, cold, moisture, etc. is bad for batteries and the wheel as a whole. (wait 30 mins before refueling label on lawnmowers)

2. No, I'll do the inspection myself (if it was actually a serious impact), there are no professional personnel in my area 

3. Yes, this is a good idea.

4. Yes, this is wise, that's what the alarms are for (don't put hands in lawn mower)

5. No, that's ridiculous. That's wasteful and very expensive. (Cant think of example for this one but the point is it's ridiculous)

6. This could be wise

7. Ok, this is helpful

 

Honestly I think this should be taken with a grain of salt. You should stay observant and treat the batteries and wheel well, but some of this is just outright ridiculous. It reminds me of the warning on airsoft guns that says don't shoot at people (for those who don't know, that is exactly what airsoft is for). Or the labels on lawn mowers that say don't put your hand in the blades, this is obvious (equivalent to items 3 and 4). 

 

[Heyzeus]

2 hours ago, shellac said:

Yeah I agree that it’s exceedingly unlikely. I was posing it more as a theoretical. 

So it seems ewheels did the calculations and it didn’t make sense for them to carry the newer Begode releases. Maybe because of issues with the wheels needing support were cutting into profits, or they were worried about safety risks from the batteries. They did have a fire on that shipment of wheels. Maybe that’s the straw that broke the camels back. 

That camel was carrying A LOT of straw.  Ewheels couldn't have been happy with the level of after sales service required of them when the nikola 1st launched and hot glue gate was a problem.

I mean if I was ewheels I would have been like "hot glue...are you fucking kidding me..."

Though the 16x and s18 have had their fair share of problems and the v11 has had some fit and finish problems too.

This is why 1st-3rd batch of new wheels is a game for people who are rich or who are natural tinkerers or retired and have a lot of time to deal with the bugs.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Heyzeus