[SOLVED] Begode selling Master "LiTech" packs: we have a problem

[The Brahan Seer]

@supercurio First thank you so much for bringing this issue to our attention. Second E-rides has updated its website. Pricing and details no longer mention Li-tech. The prices has been reduced to reflect this too. Maybe the Begode assembled batteries will be fine. From youtube tear-downs although the mechanical aspects are a bit shoddy sometimes. The electronics and battery assembly look pretty good to me (from an untrained eye). I'm curious to know if making longer suspension brackets would improve the geometry/travel or make no real difference or make it worse? 

[supercurio]

@The Brahan Seer you're welcome! I'm sure it was a fairly uncomfortable experience those tho were taken for a ride, and I'm sorry about that. Glad it was effective and got sorted in less than a week, which was the main goal.

MyEwheel updated their website too: https://myewheel.com/begode-master/

[meepmeepmayer]

Wow that Begode response.

"No no no we totally didn't lie to you all. No no no we totally had an agreement an LiTech, they're just too bu-sey, what can a honest manufacturer do then? No no no we totally didn't try to scam all other dealers and riders with pretend LiTech packs. And what if we did, nobody ever wanted these LiTech packs anyways!"

Didn't expect Begode to go so low business-wise. And what was even the point? It's not like this could have worked. Did they expect people to pay 600 extra for "better" battery packs and never find out the packs aren't what was sold to them? Was this just to get more orders in? (Only explanation I can come up with besides being intrinsically scammy.)

Anyways, many thanks to @supercurioand ray and the others for their journalistic detective work!

(Boy, when I saw the [SOLVED] edited into the title, I sure hoped for "Problem solved!", not "Mystery solved: it is as bad as it looked.". At least it's over now and there are no fake LiTech packs listed any longer.)

[techyiam]

I too have to give many thanks to @supercurio for a job well done. Not only were his sleuthing efforts able to bring this to light, despite this being an inconceivable despicable act. He was able to, in short order, stop Begode dead in its track in what looks like a conniving attempt to swindle their distributors, dealers, and ultimately their customers out of genuine LiTech battery packs. Bravo!

[Paul A]

So much effort to uncover Gotway's behaviour.

A wheel that on a low speed crash seems to be severely, structurally damaged.

A wheel that relies on the reputation of LiTech quality to assure customers that it will be safe from fire.

Gotway's reputation does not seem to be improving.

First adopter, guinea pigs may yet find more hidden problems.

Is a battery pack from LiTech all that it takes to make the Master a good wheel?

 

In a few months and Gotway might bring out the next model, with promises of quality, performance, speed, etc.

 

[Dreygun]

Begode is a like a spouse getting caught red handed, naked in bed with another person, saying "it's not what it looks like, I'd never sleep with her/ him."

[Rawnei]

2 minutes ago, Dreygun said:

Begode is a like a spouse getting caught red handed, naked in bed with another person, saying "it's not what it looks like, I'd never sleep with her/ him."

Except LiTech never agreed to sleep with them. 🤔😧😬

[Paul A]

Gotway seems to be like Lucy van Pelt from the cartoon strip, with the football.

And the customers are Charlie Brown.

This time, it will be ok, trust me.....

[BleepBloopBlop]

I do find this whole situation funny. Litech doesn't have a functional battery system to take to market and be reviewed. Everyone jumping to the conclusion it's design will be superior to Begodes is just making assumptions. Good job solving the mystery of who will eventually sell this vaporware in a couple months

[Rawnei]

1 minute ago, BleepBloopBlop said:

I do find this whole situation funny. Litech doesn't have a functional battery system to take to market and be reviewed. Everyone jumping to the conclusion it's design will be superior to Begodes is just making assumptions. Good job solving the mystery of who will eventually sell this vaporware in a couple months

That's because it's a product that didn't exist before, they are building a new product according to specs as requested and contracted by ewheels, same specs ewheels most likely been trying to get Begode to implement without much success hence why they sourced it from another supplier instead. Will it be superior? Most likely because ewheels with their experience know what improvements they would like to see in EUC battery packs going forward.

[.....]

My trust for E-wheels and Jason is enough that I would TOTALLY assume a battery pack built to HIS specs from a company HE is trusting to meet those specs, would be a much better gamble than betting on Begode. I know its odd to put your faith in something you've never seen, over something you have. However, when you take in to account WHO seems to actually care and WHO will actually suck it up and take a loss to make things right, its not that far a leap of faith. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice...

I hope the other euc companies are paying attention. Maybe SOMEDAY they will ALL quit trying to fool us and start trying to impress us. I am NOT impressed by a company that makes promises before they have a CLUE if they can fulfill them. Even more so, when the blame is ALWAYS aimed at someone other than themselves. These dealers should also know better. How many times do you have to deal with chinese euc companies, before you quit making promises to customers, based on such drivel that is told you from overseas? I for one, don't usually stick my neck out for something, when assurances of success are coming from KNOWN places of deceit. Sadly, its not just Begode who does crap similar to this. Its simply begode who got caught this time...

Edited May 25, 2022 by ShanesPlanet

[BleepBloopBlop]

Ewheels isn't an engineering house. They are a product distributor that likes to make exclusive agreements with manufactures to differentiate them from the competition. I hope their version of the master works out well. Given what we know I'm not blowing another summer waiting around for their half Begode half Litech product.

[Rawnei]

6 minutes ago, BleepBloopBlop said:

Ewheels isn't an engineering house. They are a product distributor that likes to make exclusive agreements with manufactures to differentiate them from the competition. I hope their version of the master works out well. Given what we know I'm not blowing another summer waiting around for their half Begode half Litech product.

Ewheels has a lot of knowledge about EUCs, they sell and service them, they have plenty reasons (fires) to ensure the safety of their continued operation and enough knowledge to know what improvements could and should be made for that, LiTech has the skills and manufacturing to make the hardware according to that since Begode isn't doing it themselves.

As they usually say in Chinese businesses "Please try to understand".

Edited May 25, 2022 by Rawnei

[.....]

10 minutes ago, BleepBloopBlop said:

Ewheels isn't an engineering house. They are a product distributor that likes to make exclusive agreements with manufactures to differentiate them from the competition. I hope their version of the master works out well. Given what we know I'm not blowing another summer waiting around for their half Begode half Litech product.

It doesnt take an engineering house to find a quality place to have things manufactured. It all boils down to investement and if they care. I dont have to be a car designer, to be willing to find a quality designer and pay them to build things right. Rebranding is a normal thing. The trick is, does the rebranding also come with tighter quality control, or is it merely more marketing hooey? Finding reliable builders and getting them to adhere to specs, isnt always the easiest thing. I can't fault an euc retailer for wanting to monopolize the sale of a wheel that has been modified at THEIR insistence.

E-wheels theme song...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5uWRjFsGc

Edited May 25, 2022 by ShanesPlanet

[The Brahan Seer]

So could other suppliers get exclusive agreements? Here is just one example of a company in the UK that could provide the BMS. 

https://brillpower.com/applications/

But how much integration is needed on the Begode motherboard? and why would Begode allow its motherboard to be used by a third party? Maybe they thought Li-Tech could be used by others but with supply constraints they can only supply Ewheels at this time?

Fortunately the battery cases are a simple shape.

I'm not convinced Begode deliberately misled us, I think it might have happened by mistake.

Edited May 25, 2022 by The Brahan Seer

[.....]

22 minutes ago, The Brahan Seer said:

I'm not convinced Begode deliberately misled us, I think it might have happened by mistake.

sure... a mistake. Perhaps so, but why would we care as its not their first mistake? I wouldnt keep a lawyer hired if they kept making mistakes. On purpose or not doesnt matter, its the results that do. "oops sorry your investment just went up in flames. Don't be mad tho, we didnt intend for it to happen. It was a mistake, so you can go back to believing us when we say it will NEVER happen again, again. Don't worry, next time we will blame language barriers instead of everyone else. Its not OUR fault we offered things that we can't actually fullfill."

ShanesPlanet is now selling ocean front property in Arizona. Im accepting preorders as I already talked to some random asshat in AZ, and he mentioned there would be some for me to resell soon. No, dont wait for it to materialize. Pay me NOW as I'm SURE I will have the deeds to sell soon.

Edited May 25, 2022 by ShanesPlanet

[The Brahan Seer]

Its better to give the benefit of the doubt to others and to interpret the attitudes and behaviours positively rather than negatively (at least until guilt is proven).

We all make mistakes and companies make many mistakes all the time. The key is to see the motivation behind them; are they malicious (like VW with deisel gate) or unintended like (Boeing 747 Max).

Begode has absolutely nothing to gain from alienating its customers and suppliers. Or from only offering its motherboard to one external supplier. I think they were generally trying to help everyone out. Maybe Ewheels will offer its suggestions to others. Maybe the others already know whats needed. Ultimately I like to live in a world with more compassion which I know is severely lacking around the world at the moment.

[supercurio]

48 minutes ago, The Brahan Seer said:

So could other suppliers get exclusive agreements? Here is just one example of a company in the UK that could provide the BMS. 

https://brillpower.com/applications/

But how much integration is needed on the Begode motherboard? and why would Begode allow its motherboard to be used by a third party? Maybe they thought Li-Tech could be used by others but with supply constraints they can only supply Ewheels at this time?

Fortunately the battery cases are a simple shape.

For the current Begode wheels, the barrier of entry for battery suppliers is not particularly high since there's so little communication between the BMS and mainboard.
So very little integration, which could be reverse-engineered without problem I think.

From what I'm exploring right now I see that the challenges are mainly somewhere else. Here's a non-exhaustive list:

• Will Begode still offer warranty with these packs they've not heard about and validated internally
• MOQ to get a custom BMS and pack designed
• Upfront development costs
• Will the final price be competitive compared to Begode's offering
• Costs to assemble the wheel and its battery
• Gap between battery-less wheel cost vs with battery
• Will people want to buy
• Will it indeed be better when put to the (crash) test in an EUC

I learned that European distributors, even the ones you think are the bigger ones are kind of small. US distributors which are not eWheels might have a large potential market, I don't know how big they are.

Then there's the fact that eWheels is willing to share their eWheels/LiTech packs outside of North America. Since you picked a UK battery company (thinking about UK distributors then), I think that for now at least it would make more sense to take advantage of these LiTech packs. I learned that their price should not be more than Begode's for the Master, for instance, so it could give an opportunity to make a product people would buy. That's at least a starting point.

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. But yes each distributor could contract a company to make their own packs. However in many scenarios it would be so expensive, for models that might not last long at all (we're talking about Begode) that it becomes a high risk impractical endeavor.

Edited May 25, 2022 by supercurio

[Tawpie]

I'm still in the benefit of the doubt camp, probably because I'm overly optimistic about humans in the face of the preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

I see BG as a company that "suddenly" felt the blowback from the fires—they saw rider reluctance, bad PR, and a very large distributor who refused to carry their product and made no bones about why. Their outright ownership of the performance category was under threat.

So they reacted with a slew of "see if it'll stick" attempts including Resolute. This to me, looks a bit desperate, and wasn't exactly working. I'm guessing someone was convinced that they needed to scrub the fire issue by latching onto the LiTech karma—but LiTech wasn't able to commit production capacity until BG had a large enough order book… so the great idea: let's build order volume by offering it as an option, surely we'll have enough pre-orders to get a slot on the LiTech schedule. After all, pre-orders don't have a set delivery date and if we get enough orders, we can fill them 'later'.

Not really ill intentioned, certainly deceptive, but more like a trapped animal attempting every possible escape route—even potentially self destructive ones. How deceptive is promising something that you aren't certain you can actually deliver? I think it was called vaporware for a while—BG didn't invent it! And FWIW, I still can't do @RagingGrandpa's thrust test on my S22 (although I do think there was always a better chance that KS would deliver than BG being able to source LiTech battery packs in quantity).

Edited May 25, 2022 by Tawpie

[.....]

Some companies seem to depend on hope more than results. Somestimes it even works......

Some companies seem to rely on short term memory of consumers. This also seems to be a valid strategy.

Some companies prey on misconceptions and turn unknowns into profits. Its working...

Some companies realize that once you invest in something, you will blindly ignore facts as NOONE wants to admit they got took. Its working.

Some companies change names and convince people they arent doing what they have always done... it works.

Some companies figure brand loyalty will hold more weight than current evidence... Its working.

Some companies offer after sales support, KNOWING you couldnt afford shipping and waiting 6mos for bad news.. Its working.

Some companies realize that what you print and how fancy the plastic colors are, means more than anything else..  its working.

Some people will ALWAYS assume 'it' won't happen to them, and things can't possibly be what they seem. These people are great to have around, as long as they are consumers and not builders...

Hope springs eternal!

 

 

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by ShanesPlanet

[techyiam]

If all this PR spinning has any truth, when Afeez and Sandra directly confronted Begode on the issue, Begode should have come clean then. But they didn't. End of story.

Haven't Begode already started shipping out the Masters?

If @supercurio did not blow the whistle, it certainly sounded like to me that Begode would have dug themselves a bigger and deeper hole.

Edited May 26, 2022 by techyiam

[0000]

1 hour ago, BleepBloopBlop said:

Ewheels isn't an engineering house. They are a product distributor that likes to make exclusive agreements with manufactures to differentiate them from the competition. I hope their version of the master works out well. Given what we know I'm not blowing another summer waiting around for their half Begode half Litech product.

This is an interesting thread.

In qualifying my first wheel purchase, I had quite a few back-and-forth emails with Jason and eWheels before and after my pre-order, mainly about their LiTech battery assembly venture. As one of, if not the largest, wheel distributor in N.A., clearly they had experienced enough of a pain point relying upon Gotway->Begode battery assembly quality to invest in a 3rd-party battery assembler to better control and ensure manufacturing quality of this absolutely critical safety component. Since then, any of the other wheel distributors, in N.A. and otherwise, could have and still can go out and try their hand at this if they want, but as far as I know I don't think any have done so. In fact, from these emails, here's what it cost them:

Quote

This battery project is really a big deal for us, the total amount invested, including cells, development, assembly, testing has exceeded $1m

That being said, what happened to me this last Friday with my wheel, I think, is a testament to my decision to buy my RS from eWheels. Before this, I was looking to source a wheel without battery packs in order to be sure of the quality and strength of materials (spot-welds, battery holders, water-proofing, etc) by the tried and true DIY method.

What happened? I lost control of my wheel at 30+mph (tarmac) due to violent speed wobbles (bad stance/user error) and pointed myself to the dirt for a quick exit/slide. Then I watched the wheel tumble for a bit before making an unexpected left turn, crossing the entire road, and spinning end-over-end in a drainage ditch to finally come to a stop about 1/3 submerged in dirty ditch water. Nice.

In between jumping in the ditch to pull it out, and the minutes between transporting it back to my cousin's barn to gain access to the tools to open it up and disconnect the battery, my wheel, to my amazement, did not erupt into flames! And it's not like my wheel has had an easy life up to this point too tearing up the trails. By Sunday, I had it back to 100% functional.

I sincerely doubt I'd have had this result without the attention to detail in not just the quality of the battery assembly, but also the waterproofing if I had just gotten an RS19 "off-the-shelf". Just my opinion though.

I didn't document the repair very well, but here's some pictures from this weekend when I had her apart for an extensive cleaning session as proof.

Edited May 25, 2022 by Vanturion

[Cress]

Thank you @supercurio - and 'Thank You' everyone who contributed to discovering this issue and informing everyone else. 

This episode won't be the last because EUC Manufacturers are affected by public attention, not affected by regulation or law.  An EUC Manufacturers' false sales claim is profitable until the claim is recognized and called false.  The EUC community is self-regulating in this respect because there is no help from Government authority. 

In the same way that false sales claims need to be discovered, EUC manufacturing needs to be protected from product failure caused by 'not-best practice' kinds of choices including 1) Choices that lower cost of production and compromise quality, and 2) multiple choices to lower  cost becoming linked and resulting in failure.  

Our Community including EUC Manufacturers should recognize successful EUC products are the goal and benefits flow to everyone.  Consumer demand guarantees sales growth but every mistake by a Manufacturer slows the market. The EUC market is working, new products are evolving and we can expect continued, detailed monitoring and review by EUC Buyers.

No battery the size of these Lithium-ion cells has ever consumed this much human effort.  

[supercurio]

On 5/25/2022 at 2:45 PM, meepmeepmayer said:

(Boy, when I saw the [SOLVED] edited into the title, I sure hoped for "Problem solved!", not "Mystery solved: it is as bad as it looked.". At least it's over now and there are no fake LiTech packs listed any longer.)

😆 yes the [SOLVED] tag was meant to celebrate the end of a company selling us something that wouldn't exist.

I keep working on the second part of the solution however: to get actual LiTech packs in the wheels of those who wanted that.
There are challenges to get there, but a few key distributors you know about share the same strong motivation to make it happen.

That's what might explain the delay to communicate and inform customers for some, who try to evaluate if "LiTech" Masters are feasible instead of giving bad news to their customers right away.

 

 

BTW @Vanturion thanks for sharing your story and bad luck. Even though everything looks good for now it's probably advisable to open these packs to make sure they're still 100% dry. Then re-wrapping them just as good.

Edited May 27, 2022 by supercurio

[tk463]

33 minutes ago, supercurio said:

I keep working on the second part of the solution however: to get actual LiTech packs in the wheels of those who wanted that.
There are challenges to get there, but a few key distributors you know about share the same strong motivation to make it happen.

If you could also try to get the 40T packs for the S22 to UE resellers from Kingsong, that would me make seriously happy. I'd love to get this generation of wheels some high discharge packs like I have on my eskate.