Begode 900Wh Battery Recall Options

[Tawpie]

I think that Adam's video made some good points and do believe he was pretty clear that Begode has improved the situation with their newer battery packs. I also believe that much of the angst driving his divorcing Begode is "loss of trust". In the same way that Ford knowingly sold the Pinto long after they knew it was relatively easy for it to catch on fire following an accident, Begode, up until recently, produced and sold battery packs that lack a fundamental safety feature and also include a few "obviously not the best idea" design elements.

We all know that rider thrill and excitement is the Begode brand. We can inspect a wheel and see that they're not as concerned about build quality as their competitors. Adam is pointing out that they have been willing (past tense) to make design choices that appear aimed at reducing manufacturing cost or increasing performance even when those choices reduce rider safety.

The only motivation for Begode to change and improve is the specter of lost sales. We set the bar. I suspect that eWheel's decision last year to not sell Begode wheels with the factory batteries is part of the motivation that drove Begode's recent safety improvement—customers (eWheels is a large Begode customer) can force changes... I'm hoping Adam's video at least makes Begode think about starting their own recall program, and perhaps about how they can innovate to provide the performance we cherish without the safety sacrifices of today's designs. Who knows, maybe?

[mrelwood]

6 hours ago, supercurio said:

The EX.N of a friend stopped charging at 96.6V. Yesterday his packs got checked and one of the cell groups was damaged.
Why that happened?

He didn’t have a habit of terminating the charge at 80% or otherwise before the chargers turn green, did he? If not, then he probably just got a lemon in a form of a battery cell, BMS, or the battery pack construction. I’d say he was lucky though, having a cell group go to 0V can be a situation that causes a cell to go into thermal runaway in some situations.

6 hours ago, supercurio said:

Discussing what would be the options now, my suggestion was: "let's look into where to buy a LiTech replacement pack".
Because 2 of these packs instead of 3 is still an improvement I guess.

I hope I understood you wrong, as in your planning to only change some of the packs but not all? That’sa big no no. The battery cells and the BMS must have similar characteristics for them to function safely (or at all) for a reasonable length of time.

 

6 hours ago, supercurio said:

Don't sell it either to someone else who might not understand the risk.

This is an important point! We all know what’s right and wrong when selling a questionably functioning large li-ion pack, be it in a wheel or separately.

 

6 hours ago, Bizra6ot said:

I think there is a lot of FUD, for those who are afraid and will get rid of their gotway wheels despite the low percentage recorded, with the dozens of possible causes of domestic fires that happen every day I hope you do not live in an apartment but in a cabin in the woods without electricity stove or candle, be careful with falling trees and lightning though

I see a lot of FUD as well, but it was all concentrated in the quote above.

 You want percentage? Last I checked GW/BG battery fires have been overall about 1500% more common than that of Inmotion or KingSong. Counting spontaneous fires only makes the percentage a difficult way of presenting things, since other manufacturers have had none. GW/BG’s closer to twenty fires are a whole lotta percent more than zero.

[Bizra6ot]

 

13 hours ago, mrelwood said:

I see a lot of FUD as well, but it was all concentrated in the quote above.

 You want percentage? Last I checked GW/BG battery fires have been overall about 1500% more common than that of Inmotion or KingSong. Counting spontaneous fires only makes the percentage a difficult way of presenting things, since other manufacturers have had none. GW/BG’s closer to twenty fires are a whole lotta percent more than zero.

Yes I don't deny compared to other brands but at the same time as we can see with the big gatherings regrouping all kind of riders the majority of the wheels are gotway and sherman and for the more extreme practices all the dirt jump or hard trails riders have gotway ht, so necessarily the percentage will be much higher
I was talking about the low percentage of fire so about 20 on what 5 or 7 years of worldwide sales that is not a common thing either  
For the FUD thing it's not especialy here but all over the web, I mean ok it's their choice and people do what they want but after get rid of their gotway what for many home fires start with an electrical problem so they live without electricity? gas problems that blow up apartments so they get rid of their boiler and gas stove? It's a bit overreacting

  

21 hours ago, sevin7 said:

 My RS19 HT delivered in July 2021 beeps every time I hit 28 MPH. I've done everything you can think of to turn these beeps off but nothing works. It should not beep at 28 MPH, but it does, and I can't find anyone else who has the same issue with this wheel. 

In RS specifications sheet there is 2nd alarm 45 kmh / 28 mph, I've read somewhere that with gotways the app can't read status of the wheel so it can be stated OFF in app but ON on the wheel, did you tried to activate it first in app and then desactivate it?

Speed alarm	First class alarm: 2 beeps/sec, 30km/h
	Second class alarm: 3beeps/sec, 45km/h
	80% motor output, 5 beeps/sec

[FunTech4Real]

2 hours ago, Bizra6ot said:

In RS specifications sheet there is 2nd alarm 45 kmh / 28 mph, I've read somewhere that with gotways the app can't read status of the wheel so it can be stated OFF in app but ON on the wheel, did you tried to activate it first in app and then desactivate it?

I've tried disabling the alarms using every EUC app possible including the gotway app (tried many times).

[Paul A]

House fires caused by electricity/gas are presumably from unknown faults.

Gotway lack of safety and quality control issues are known and preventable.

Other brands are evidence of possibility of higher safety.

Gotway fires keep happening with disturbing frequency.

[Paul A]

Ford Pinto cars.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness/

For seven years the Ford Motor Company sold cars in which it knew hundreds of people would needlessly burn to death.

Ford engineers discovered in pre-production crash tests that rear-end collisions would rupture the Pinto’s fuel system extremely easily. 

Because assembly-line machinery was already tooled when engineers found this defect, top Ford officials decided to manufacture the car anyway—exploding gas tank and all—even though Ford owned the patent on a much safer gas tank.

With a half million cars rolling off the assembly lines each year, Pinto is the biggest-selling subcompact in America, and the company’s operating profit on the car is fantastic. 

Ford waited eight years because its internal “cost-benefit analysis,” which places a dollar value on human life, said it wasn’t profitable to make the changes sooner.

 

https://www.spokesman.com/blogs/autos/2008/oct/17/pinto-memo-its-cheaper-let-them-burn/

In sum, the cost of recalling the Pinto would have been $121 million, whereas paying off the victims would only have cost Ford $50 million. 

____________

 

This scenario also happens with other manufacturers and products.

eg: kitchen appliances

[RagingGrandpa]

As an engineer, the reason I haven't put myself in the anti-Gotway camp is: their choices seemed appropriate to me.

Such as:

1. No output circuit protection (until 2020 when fuses started appearing): Not having an output-shutoff-system avoids cutout crashes that can result from 'nuisance activation' of the protection circuit. Lower complexity gives increased reliability. Cutouts are just as terrifying to me as fires, considering that I'm riding near obstacles, in traffic, etc.
    
2. No watertight battery box: The MSP and RS are already annoyingly wide. An additional battery enclosure would add another inch of total width to the EUC. I'd rather have a non-immersion-rated battery in a comfortable-to-ride shape (like MSuper), than a tiny battery in a stronger box (like S18), or having a fatter shell (like Abrams).

Those seem to be the only two design topics that the recent posts are criticizing.

The design choice that I didn't like was: rapid adoption of the cheapest-available (while still being name-brand) 21700-size cell.
Just 4 years ago, Gotway packs had even fewer protection features (MSV2 mounted cells without frames and had no port protection, for example), and yet their fire occurrence rate was low. Soon after, the MSX 84V with 18650GA was an extremely successful product, and enjoyed an excellent reputation for safety in the community (doesn't catch fire, doesn't cut out).
Fast forward to 2021: they've finally moved away from the most-frequently-implicated 21700 cell model (M50T), and we're now seeing 48X, 50E, and M50LT in production. That's progress.
Do they have a duty to recall the old cells? The customer community seems divided on the answer; constructive debate is welcome here.

(FWIW, I did take the poor service record of the M50T packs, as motivation to prepare and use a steel cabinet for storing and charging my MSP.
And if I replace my MSP with something newer, whatever that may be, I would still plan to use the safety cabinet, at least until the community demonstrates 12mos of fire-free ownership.)

Edited November 24, 2021 by RagingGrandpa

[AtlasP]

@RagingGrandpa -- In your eagerness to try to argue technicalities with WrongWay's specific video presentation, you're dropping the broader context which is: we're currently discussing this topic in a thread started by Jason of eWheels definitively stating that the Begode-assembled 900Wh packs (with 21700 M50LT cells) are *UNSAFE*, coupled with the extreme recommendation that it's *SO* bad/dangerous that customers should actively remove and dispose of these packs *IMMEDIATELY* and then go about securing replacements. That's huge and unprecedented.

And ultimately I trust Jason more than any of the current youtubers or any random forum commenters. Particularly when you think about how much he has to lose with such a declaration, or how much time and money had to be spent on the LiTech solution, and yet it has to be *so bad* that he's willing to do these things and so explicitly.

Edited November 26, 2021 by AtlasP

[AtlasP]

On 11/24/2021 at 3:00 AM, Bizra6ot said:

Yes I don't deny compared to other brands but at the same time as we can see with the big gatherings regrouping all kind of riders the majority of the wheels are gotway and sherman and for the more extreme practices all the dirt jump or hard trails riders have gotway ht, so necessarily the percentage will be much higher

You're implying/inferring something about the marketshare/number of wheels sold of the various manufacturers based on the constituency of a narrow enthusiast band. Yet the numbers that have been made available over the past year or two (and further hinted at/reinforced by other sources) that there are far more InMotion wheels sold than any other brand--in some cases InMotion has been shown outselling all other EUCs brands *combined* as recently as in 2020 (before the successful launches of the V11 & V12), or even in some markets just the V8 line *alone* outselling *all* Gotway/Begode wheels. And yet even though InMotion sells many more EUCs than Gotway/Begode, they have had one widely known fire in the past four years and it was back in 2018--and in that same time there have been ~17(!) Gotway/Begode fires.

Edited November 25, 2021 by AtlasP

[Felix]

36 minutes ago, AtlasP said:

You're implying/inferring something about the marketshare/number of wheels sold of the various manufacturers based on the constituency of a narrow enthusiast band. Yet the numbers that have been made available over the past year or two (and further hinted at/reinforced by other sources) that there are far more InMotion wheels sold than any other brand--in some cases InMotion has been shown outselling all other EUCs brands *combined* as recently as in 2020 (before the successful launches of the V11 & V12), or even in some markets just the V8 line *alone* outselling *all* Gotway/Begode wheels. And yet even though InMotion sells many more EUCs than Gotway/Begode, they have had one widely known fire in the past four years and it was back in 2018--and in that same time there have been ~17(!) Gotway/Begode fires.

It's really clear that Gotway wheels are majority brand sold in recent 2 years or so. Almost any group picture on any forum shows majority Gotway and also a recent FB survey done. I wonder what numbers you are referring to I don't believe any of the manufacturer publishes these. 

[Silver]

43 minutes ago, Felix said:

shows majority Gotway and also a recent FB survey done. I wonder what numbers you are referring to I don't believe any of the manufacturer publishes these

He is referring to stats from 3rd party sellers like ewheels and ecodrift 

[AtlasP]

On 11/25/2021 at 3:32 PM, Felix said:

It's really clear that Gotway wheels are majority brand sold in recent 2 years or so. Almost any group picture on any forum shows majority Gotway and also a recent FB survey done. I wonder what numbers you are referring to I don't believe any of the manufacturer publishes these. 

This is very simply false/not even close. Such youtubers and niche enthusiast groups and forums are simply not representative of the market at large which is absolutely dominated by entry-level / last-mile options. Gotway/Begode is at best 3rd (out of 4) in sales.

Ecodrift 2019 Sales Numbers

Ecodrift shows not just InMotion but the V8 alone outselling all Gotway wheels combined. Elsewhere (in vlogs and comments) other resellers notably in Europe corroborate the V8 as the top selling EUC.

• By brand: https://forum.electricunicycle.org/topic/17219-ecodrifts-2019-service-statistics-failure-rate-by-brand-and-model/?do=findComment&comment=291538
• By model:
  https://forum.electricunicycle.org/topic/17219-ecodrifts-2019-service-statistics-failure-rate-by-brand-and-model/?tab=comments#comment-291537

Early 2020 InMotion Numbers

InMotion shows numbers indicating 60 percent of global EUC marketshare--that's basically 2 out of every 3 EUCs sold. Note that this is just with the lineup of V5/V8/V10 and before the launch of the V11 & V12 which have certainly expanded IM's reach into more of the market than they had been targeting previously.

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=pKxxa5E1tAQ

Ecodrift 1H 2021 Sales Numbers

This one splits out the V8 and V8F refresh as separate entries each in the top 5--taken together the V8 line remains the top selling EUC. More broadly the top is absolutely dominated by entry level / last-mile options made by IM and King Song, and the only Gotway/Begode wheel in the top 10 is the Nik+ at number *9*.

• https://forum.electricunicycle.org/topic/23851-most-sold-wheel-in-russia-in-2021-v5f/

 

[Added] Hsiang's video Jan 2022

Repeats some of the aforementioned points in particular regarding InMotion as the largest brand and the V8 dominating unit sales. Now obviously in part he could just be repeating things from the forums like I've collated here, but I don't think he would do that unless he had a lot of confidence in it (perhaps through inside information being in contact with the major resellers) as a large portion of his audience is enthusiasts who do not take kindly to this information.

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=AlJdbn6jgq4&ab_channel=Hsiang

--

I have posted variations on this comment several times before and even had Jason of eWheels 'like' one of them, which seems about as close as we're going to get to corroboration that the same is basically true in NA or certainly ballpark. The bottom line is that InMotion's $1k wheels absolute dominate unit sales--on one hand because they're much cheaper than $2-4k wheels (and budget options outsell luxury options in every market), but on the other hand the other manufacturers also have options in and under the $1k mark and yet still the V8/F/S outsell them all by a wide margin.

Edited January 24, 2022 by AtlasP

[mrelwood]

47 minutes ago, Felix said:

It's really clear that Gotway wheels are majority brand sold in recent 2 years or so. Almost any group picture on any forum shows majority Gotway and also a recent FB survey done. I wonder what numbers you are referring to I don't believe any of the manufacturer publishes these. 

As he said, enthusiast groups surely favor Gotway, and what is a more enthusiastic group than those who meet up just to ride a similar vehicle? Or the ones that visit EUC pages in FB?

I’m sure you can find an endless amount of photos on Corvette group rides or Corvette FB pages, and very few or none on Toyota Avensis. Yet it’s so obvious that there are probably a hundred Avensis cars sold for each Corvette.

[div]

A whole lot of inmotion EUCs in Paris, mostly v8. I’d guesstimate close to 50% of the market here. They generally don’t hang on forums or go joyriding. Source: a few years of observations.

Edit: As for enthusiasts one can notice Begode and Kingsong sub-forums have close to the same level of participation, here and also French forum. 

Edit 2: regarding the last point KS is well represented in group rides here because we often favor distance and landscape over agressive riding. (Seba have confirmed interest for long range in France)

Edited November 26, 2021 by div

[Mango]

True in my observation as well. The V8 hits the sweet spot for a city like Paris in terms of the city’s size and density. I see Inmotions everywhere in Paris.

KS 16x are very popular as well, but I have yet to see an S18. You’d think an S18 would be popular given Paris’ roads but nope. I think the S18 is just too heavy and cumbersome for most Parisian commuters for what it offers.

I see very few performance Gotway wheels like MSX, but some mcm5 and telsas. Never seen a MPro.

[Kekafuch]

Does Marty represent the marketplace?

[Felix]

8 hours ago, AtlasP said:

This is very simply false/not even close. Such youtubers and niche enthusiast groups and forums are simply not representative of the market at large which is absolutely dominated by entry-level / last-mile options. Gotway/Begode is at best 3rd (out of 4) in sales.

That could be true and I don't claim to know the answer. But I don't really agree that for example Facebook EUC Community is in some way more likely to buy Gotway, because they are "enthusiasts". I think Fbook is a good cross section of all walks of life representing anyone. Even my mum is on Fbook My own poll showed there 41% Gotway purchases and that's a statistic (yes small sample size) and not anecdotal like "A whole lot of inmotion EUCs in Paris". Also IMO since the price-to-spec ratio is very good with Gotways it make sense they sell a lot of wheels. They are the Toyota, not the Corvette

[Paul A]

In depth, highly detailed, market reports on all industries are available every year.

Can just google

"Electric Unicycle Manufacturers by market share".

 

Free sample reports available.

Anecdotes not really accurate evidence.

[mike_bike_kite]

10 hours ago, AtlasP said:

we're currently discussing this topic in a thread started by Jason of eWheels definitively stating that the Begode-assembled 900Wh packs (with 21700 M50LT cells) are *UNSAFE*, coupled with the extreme recommendation that it's *SO* bad/dangerous that customers should actively remove and dispose of these packs *IMMEDIATELY* and then go about securing replacements. That's huge and unprecedented.

I think it's great that Jason is warning us but I live in the UK. It would be useful (essential) to know what percentage of 900Wh batteries are catching fire. If it's 10% then I'm disposing of the wheel now, if it's 1% then I'll build an out house to hold it, if it's under 0.1% then I'm probably not going to worry. If it's just batteries that are mistreated, overstressed and never balanced then again I can mitigate against that. Is GW/Begode offering replacement batteries at cost or for free? Is it really the batteries that are the issue as other wheels have the same batteries or can they supply replacement firmware that reduces the risk at the expense of a little performance.   

[Planemo]

45 minutes ago, mike_bike_kite said:

 Is GW/Begode offering replacement batteries at cost or for free?

If you see an elephant flying over your house then maybe. If not...no.

45 minutes ago, mike_bike_kite said:

can they supply replacement firmware that reduces the risk at the expense of a little performance.   

I cant see how a change of firmware would make any real difference to this problem. Unless its related to power output but then you could do that yourself by just riding more conservatively.

[div]

1 hour ago, Paul A said:

 

In depth, highly detailed, market reports on all industries are available every year.

 

I doubt these automatically generated mumbo jumbo reports about airwheel in 2028 are any more scientific than my wet finger approach.

The difference is that I clearly stated mine where just daily observations. I’m not prancing around with made up accuracy.

I also mentioned a second set of data available to all which is participation in forums.

Since you have so much faith in those reports, enlighten us with a sample.

[Paul A]

Google as suggested.

Report contents are outlined.

[mike_bike_kite]

1 hour ago, Planemo said:

I cant see how a change of firmware would make any real difference to this problem. Unless its related to power output but then you could do that yourself by just riding more conservatively.

Other wheels use these batteries and don't burst into flames so I assume there's either special hardware to avoid this risk (this costs money) or there's different firmware that reduces this risk. Could it detect that one battery pack is imbalanced and, if it can't balance them, then provide plenty of warnings to the rider. Or could the firmware just detect that the wheel isn't being used but the temp is steadily rising inside the wheel while the outside temp is constant?

I'll admit it does bothers me that a wheel might burst into flames while I'm asleep. I think it's unlikely as I ride quite conservatively but I just don't have any real numbers to base that on. I assume the fires happen from thermal runaway caused by imbalanced battery packs trying to balance themselves. Could there just be a simple switch that turns off balancing when he's not present?

1 hour ago, Planemo said:

If you see an elephant flying over your house then maybe. If not...no.

We currently have flocks of flying pigs going over the house so it's difficult to spot elephants at the moment but I'll keep an eye out.

[Bizra6ot]

 

2 hours ago, mike_bike_kite said:

I think it's great that Jason is warning us but I live in the UK. It would be useful (essential) to know what percentage of 900Wh batteries are catching fire. If it's 10% then I'm disposing of the wheel now, if it's 1% then I'll build an out house to hold it, if it's under 0.1% then I'm probably not going to worry. If it's just batteries that are mistreated, overstressed and never balanced then again I can mitigate against that. Is GW/Begode offering replacement batteries at cost or for free? Is it really the batteries that are the issue as other wheels have the same batteries or can they supply replacement firmware that reduces the risk at the expense of a little performance.   

I think the same for the percentage

And for the mistreated and overstressed, apart from the wrongway assumption there is no real correlation established with this, as stated by wrongway himself no problem with his msp, same with fantomas choochtech and other hard trail or dirt jump riders on msp/rs no one reported fire cause of this

 

 

[div]

46 minutes ago, Paul A said:

Google as suggested.

Report contents are outlined.

No, the burden of proof is on the claimant.

edit: actually, never mind, I can’t take you seriously with your self important tone. > ignored. This will save me your constant dramatic and alarmistic statements as well.

Edited November 26, 2021 by div