The Direction Inmotion new wheels will be taking.

[techyiam]

1 hour ago, Drunkard said:

If i remember Bob was saying there will be a possibility for people to buy different wheels and share the battery packs. That is a weird proposition that i can't see happening. Owning multiple wheels makes sense because you can just grab the one you feel like riding and go. Having to swap the battery from one to other just feels like an annoyance to me. Majority of people want's a finished product feel, not a constant tinkering.. Making sure battery always topped up so you can swap them.. If you have two wheels and you just came back form a ride and just want to grab the other one and go for some more. You can't really borrow more battery from the first wheel because it's fucking dead.

I guess different strokes for different folks.

I think quick swappable battery system is a great idea for me.

I generally don't need much range. It is only needed when I want to go on a group ride, or when I want to go a destination out of town.

 I may be interested in an Adventure class of wheel, and a Challenger class of wheel. If Inmotion manages to produce great wheels in these classes, I can get one of each and one set of batteries. 

We won't know how well they are going to work now. I have to wait until they are out before I can evaluate the wheels and battery system. 

1 hour ago, Drunkard said:

If you have two wheels and you just came back form a ride and just want to grab the other one and go for some more. You can't really borrow more battery from the first wheel because it's fucking dead. 

This illogical and poor planning. How does this makes sense? You have let say 1800 Wh battery and you need 3600 Wh range. If you need 3600 Wh range, you need 3600 Wh of battery, one wheel or 2 wheels. 

[Drunkard]

8 hours ago, techyiam said:

This illogical and poor planning. How does this makes sense? You have let say 1800 Wh battery and you need 3600 Wh range. If you need 3600 Wh range, you need 3600 Wh of battery, one wheel or 2 wheels. 

Well I'm thinking like this. You have two wheels with base battery capacity. Lets say an adventure wheel with 1800Wh and a more crusing orientated one with 1800Wh. I know that in real life you would have different values but i'm making a simple example here.. I might be mistaken but i remember Bob saying that swappable battery would allow you to have the less combines batteries in total and swap them around. So lets say you end up with both wheels having 800 Wh base that you don't take out. and a 800 Wh pack that you throw in to whatever the wheel before you go out. You go out and rip around on your adventure wheel in the tracks, and get back with your 1800Wh used up. That leaves you second wheel with 800 and no option to increase it as your swappable pack is dead. You probably just stay home and wait for charge knowing that 800Wh in your cruiser will not get you far.. my point is that swappable battery shared between wheels would just end up being annoying. Just get proper two wheels. 

Base battery size wheels don't need this fuction as it would only increase weight/width/price. 

 

It might be a wet dream for anyone who finds the master pro 4800Wh too little... they already picturing themselves with more packs than they can fit between the legs.. 

And the big size wheels.. ok lets say SS. It's a 44kg 3600Wh wheel. Imagine taking out half your battery. Now you are 38-40kg? Did you make your wheel light? no.. Did you just fuck up the performance, risking a cutout, and significantly increased the discharge pace thus increasing the wear and tear on half your batteries? Yup... Noone will willingly take out battery out of big wheel. 

 

I stand by that this is a bad idea.

 

[Drunkard]

8 hours ago, techyiam said:

I guess different strokes for different folks.

I think quick swappable battery system is a great idea for me.

I generally don't need much range. It is only needed when I want to go on a group ride, or when I want to go a destination out of town.

 I may be interested in an Adventure class of wheel, and a Challenger class of wheel. If Inmotion manages to produce great wheels in these classes, I can get one of each and one set of batteries. 

We won't know how well they are going to work now. I have to wait until they are out before I can evaluate the wheels and battery system.

Sure. I'm not probably thinking of all possible scenarios. You could have a bigger trip weekend wheel and a week day wheel. Where you could use the fun wheel more and put the battery in to the bigger one only before big trip you plan up. But there have to be a big advantage to do it. If it is only some money saved(under a 1k) than it's not worth it. I really doubt you ever winning on weight tbh.. I might be wrong. If they nail it it might be good. But i have to see it to believe it.

 

[mrelwood]

 

1 hour ago, Drunkard said:

That leaves you second wheel with 800 and no option to increase it as your swappable pack is dead.

@techyiam's point still stands. If 3x 800Wh isn’t enough for your daily needs, it won’t be enough no matter if it’s swappable or not.

1 hour ago, Drunkard said:

Just get proper two wheels.

Or just get the amount of batteries that you need.

1 hour ago, Drunkard said:

SS. It's a 44kg 3600Wh wheel. Imagine taking out half your battery. Now you are 38-40kg?

1800Wh worth of 21700 cells alone weigh exactly 6.00 kg. Add 2 BMSs, casings and cables and you’re probably at around 8kg total. 36kg would make it comparable to S22, which is probably the lightest wheel of it’s kind. 420Wh less, sure, but still in the same general capacity class.

1 hour ago, Drunkard said:

Did you just fuck up the performance, risking a cutout

When did “only” 1800Wh worth of batteries become a significant cutout risk?? Remember RS? If you want the 3600Wh performance though, then you need 3600Wh of batteries. Again, swappable or not.

1 hour ago, Drunkard said:

I stand by that this is a bad idea.

I used to think so too, but for different reasons. At this point though, there is a real possibility for them to make it work. And I can’t disregard the surely huge amounts of work hours they are putting into this to get it right. Who am I to say after thinking about it for a minute that it would be a bad idea?

 If I’ll get myself an Adventure, I don’t know if I’ll ever remove any of the batteries. But I respect that I can get the wheel with the capacity I need, not what the demons of NY need.

[Flygonial]

2 hours ago, Drunkard said:

Did you just fuck up the performance, risking a cutout, and significantly increased the discharge pace thus increasing the wear and tear on half your batteries?

Even though I'm a fan of swappable batteries (firstly, all the possibilities for different uses and different people's needs, secondly we see e-bikes with even triple battery setups nowadays and I see this as sort of just going to parity in convenience and tech with that), I think you have valid concerns. Firstly, I would imagine the risks from a performance drop aren't too big of a concern when addressed in software. The wheel would know how many packs are connected and can be locked into a certain configuration with tiltback at different speeds, lower current limits, and going too low in capacity could just be not allowed altogether. 

As far as using differently matched packs in terms of wear and tear, I would agree that there's some real concerns that aren't as simple to address. There would probably need to be a lot of caveats around just swapping around packs willy-nilly, and I can actually see concerns over cell matching from batteries in different states of their life cycle. It would obviously be best practice to keep your batteries matched to a similar amount of cycles and obviously it's very important that their voltages are balanced with each other before you start riding (you should probably not be allowed to load up say half the total capacity of a wheel, ride around a bit, then pop in the rest of the packs at a fully charged voltage because that's a gross voltage imbalance).

There are a lot of ways to approach this, you could only allow batteries that have been in the wheel within the same charge cycle to be used, though this would obviously be very restrictive. You could also only allow for packs within a certain voltage difference from each other to be used. Furthermore, new wheels beyond a certain capacity (probably all of them that aren't in the Courage lineup) can be shipped with some amount of "active balancing" like the V13 has, and if you drop battery packs that are off in voltage you could have the wheel start balance charging them with respect to each other while forcing you to wait and not allowing the wheel to balance and be ridden. However, I don't know within what limits of imbalance it is safe to do this and I do acknowledge that if a feature like this is implemented that Inmotion needs to proceed carefully.

Do keep in mind that cells and their respective internal resistances are mostly just matched within the same pack during production, so wheel already may not necessarily come with separate packs that are ideally matched to each other anyways (unless they actually do take that step in QC, correct me if I'm wrong). I would think that within reason packs that are even just 50-100 cycles within each other wouldn't be much of a problem as long as they're balanced during charging. If you want to take it to the extreme, I wonder if it would be possible to dynamically adjust the current draw allowed from each pack based on their total cycles (which each pack should probably remember internally in their BMS), but at this point I can see concerns over cost or just sheer complexity.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Flygonial
grammar mistakes lol

[techyiam]

2 hours ago, Drunkard said:

Did you just fuck up the performance, risking a cutout, and significantly increased the discharge pace thus increasing the wear and tear on half your batteries? Yup... Noone will willingly take out battery out of big wheel. 

Inmotion will also offer high discharge cell battery packs. I"ll let Inmotion do its thing, and when the wheels are out, I evaluate the capabilities against my requirements, and then decide.

[Drunkard]

ok i'm shutting my mouth and waiting for IM to show what they got. But it have to be a damn good design of the swapping packs to minimize the negatives and justify this being a thing.  

[The Brahan Seer]

Maybe the way they are going to be implemented will be different to what we expect.  Although the batteries are easier to swap out in reality they won't be expected to be often.

So you would buy a wheel with your battery requirements but if later down the line you require more range or need to replace a faulty/old packs or change tyres then this can be done easier.

So not really hot swappable.

This would still be useful and certainly welcome and a lot easier for them to implement.

The actual dimensions of the packs could be the same but hold different capacities.

Just a thought.

 

[techyiam]

32 minutes ago, The Brahan Seer said:

So not really hot swappable.

I thought I heard 4 minutes, for the time to install a swappable battery. Apparently, the battery cable has a quick-connector. So, one only has to fasten four screws, and then push in a weather resistant quick-connector. So yeah, it doesn't sound like the hot swappable type of deal. 

I am OK with that, though. I got to see how things unfold, and through experience, figure out what needs to be improve.

 

[Funky]

1 hour ago, techyiam said:

I thought I heard 4 minutes, for the time to install a swappable battery. Apparently, the battery cable has a quick-connector. So, one only has to fasten four screws, and then push in a weather resistant quick-connector. So yeah, it doesn't sound like the hot swappable type of deal. 

I am OK with that, though. I got to see how things unfold, and through experience, figure out what needs to be improve.

 

So you are saying the "quick swappable batteries" will have a wire with connector dangling? (Same thing as our regular battery packs?) And each time you want to remove/place battery, you will need to mess around with screws and the dangling connector???

Yeah what can go wrong.......... If you gonna make a quick swappable batteries, do it RIGHT!!! No dangling wires. The connection part should be solid, no moving wires, etc.. Same thing as power tools batteries. They simply swap in/out with one button press. 

If people need to connect dangling wires and screw - screws in every time. That mechanism will NOT LAST. How stupid people need to be - to not understand that. (I'm talking about people who will remove battery after each ride - storing it in "fireproof" container, etc..)

 

As you said - This is not a quick swap in any means. I'm mostly worried about the screws/connector. How many times can you pull it apart, till something breaks.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Funky

[techyiam]

2 minutes ago, Funky said:

So you are saying the "quick swappable batteries" will have a wire with connector dangling? (Same thing as our regular battery packs?) And each time you want to remove/place battery, you will need to mess around with screws and the dangling connector???

Well, we all watched same the Interview videos with Bob Yan. It is subject to interpretation. The people who actually saw the swappable battery system are not allowed to speak or post anything about it. So we can only speculate. 

[Funky]

3 minutes ago, techyiam said:

Well, we all watched same the Interview videos with Bob Yan.

I didn't.  

Edited June 1, 2023 by Funky

[bpong]

On 5/31/2023 at 5:10 PM, Flygonial said:

Even though I'm a fan of swappable batteries (firstly, all the possibilities for different uses and different people's needs, secondly we see e-bikes with even triple battery setups nowadays and I see this as sort of just going to parity in convenience, ... each pack based on their total cycles (which each pack should probably remember internally in their BMS), but at this point I can see concerns over cost or just sheer complexity.

Flygonial,

may i make the suggestion that, if you have the spare time, could you edit this comment and add a very very simple guide containing basic DO's and DON'Ts of diy battery pack contruction and design ?  im not saying go into the nitty gritty of the project, but rather important stuff like the diff between serial and parallel connections,  importance behind voltage matching,  general battery handling...stuff that is basic to most followers of radio control models such as surface, and air...  no pressure, just forwarding a proposal... hopefully this may help or deter (in a good way) people from getting into it blindly.

it may be a better idea to search the forum and find one of the existing diy battery topics that would be appropriate to add the above.  as advised by mrelwood (re; thanx for the suggestion...).

Edited June 5, 2023 by bpong

[mrelwood]

1 hour ago, bpong said:

could you edit this comment and add …

Let’s keep this thread at least loosely related to it’s topic. There are DIY battery threads already, one of them even being active lately iirc.

[bpong]

im looking forward to seeing if inmotion does good on what they propose for the swappable battery packs.  volvo is bringing an affordable electric vehicle to market and they will offer it with a choice of battery types:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volvo-cars-launches-ex30-electric-suv-with-focus-affordability-2023-06-07/

from one of the bob yan interview videos,  mr. yan mentioned that inmotion will also be offering a choice of different battery types for their battery packs as well.  im beginning to warm up to inmotions sensibilities - only time will tell if they do what they say.  to make a bold statement,  perhaps inmotion is going abit further than the other competing euc manufacturers:  to offer swappable battery packs,  and also offer a choice in battery type (high discharge and regular discharge),  indicates to me that they are trying to cater to the customer needs rather than the "take it or leave it" attitude.  IMO,  inmotions proposal and redo of their model lineup does represent a much stronger commitment to the future design and sell-ability of the electric unicycle,  rather than commonly releasing a single new euc.

inmotion has a lot to account for now.  they know the euc community is waiting, ...

 

[bpong]

regarding the notion that a business can be had by renting out the battery packs to prospective inmotion riders,  what would the liabilities be and how would they be addressed ?

- for the customer, would a deposit for the cost of the battery pack(s) be necessary ?  otherwise, how would the business owner be protected from a rider who intentionally or un-intentionally damages the pack thru very hard riding ?  afterall, it is unthinkable that a rider who leases a battery pack,  must that rider follow a strict set of rules regarding HOW THEY RIDE ?

- eventually, the battery packs will suffer normal wear and tear thru constant use, constant recharging, etc,... will inmotion provide the business owner some kind of refurbishing service for the heavily used battery packs ?  or does the complete worn out battery pack simply become a victim of the recycle bin or recycle dumpster ?  or can the battery pack itself be refilled with fresh lipo batteries and the newly refurbished pack put back into service ?

- for other damages such as the following:

cracked battery packs caused by a rider crash,  worn out or broken battery connectors in the battery pack (caused by normal constant wear and tear of packs being connected, disconnected, etc,...); what would the guidelines be for these types of damages ?  who is liable for those damages ?

IMO, i think that inmotion is abit too optimistic in presenting this idea of a potential business opportunity in renting these battery packs.  if its an individual setting up a small shop to do this,  the liabilities are far too much for 1 person to carry.  if on the other hand,  its a business that is setup like a member of a franchise,  with support from the inmotion parent company,  then perhaps this may turn out to be more doable since the liabilities would be shared between owner and parent company inmotion.

i dont have experience in business,  i can only speculate.  if there are euc riders with major experience in setting up and running a successful business,  your valuable opinion would be very welcome in this topic.

 

 

[SiViG]

17 hours ago, bpong said:

regarding the notion that a business can be had by renting out the battery packs to prospective inmotion riders,  what would the liabilities be and how would they be addressed ?

- for the customer, would a deposit for the cost of the battery pack(s) be necessary ?  otherwise, how would the business owner be protected from a rider who intentionally or un-intentionally damages the pack thru very hard riding ?  afterall, it is unthinkable that a rider who leases a battery pack,  must that rider follow a strict set of rules regarding HOW THEY RIDE ?

- eventually, the battery packs will suffer normal wear and tear thru constant use, constant recharging, etc,... will inmotion provide the business owner some kind of refurbishing service for the heavily used battery packs ?  or does the complete worn out battery pack simply become a victim of the recycle bin or recycle dumpster ?  or can the battery pack itself be refilled with fresh lipo batteries and the newly refurbished pack put back into service ?

- for other damages such as the following:

cracked battery packs caused by a rider crash,  worn out or broken battery connectors in the battery pack (caused by normal constant wear and tear of packs being connected, disconnected, etc,...); what would the guidelines be for these types of damages ?  who is liable for those damages ?

IMO, i think that inmotion is abit too optimistic in presenting this idea of a potential business opportunity in renting these battery packs.  if its an individual setting up a small shop to do this,  the liabilities are far too much for 1 person to carry.  if on the other hand,  its a business that is setup like a member of a franchise,  with support from the inmotion parent company,  then perhaps this may turn out to be more doable since the liabilities would be shared between owner and parent company inmotion.

i dont have experience in business,  i can only speculate.  if there are euc riders with major experience in setting up and running a successful business,  your valuable opinion would be very welcome in this topic.

 

 

No business experience, but the idea of a deposit for the cost of the battery packs being necessary seems just. I don't think it's possible to intentionally or otherwise damage the pack by riding, it would be possible to steal it, that the main risk covered by the deposit. The cost of rent should cover the costs of recycling the battery pack. Look at the current EUC rental offers, most of them tend to cost around 1/30 of the new EUC cost, if the battery pack would cost $2000, a day of rental could easily be $10, and still be profitable, as a battery pack would most likely survive more than a year. Any battery and other damages are rider's liability, I don't think any insurance company would be willing to cover them.

[OldFartRides]

May be a better idea when we have better battery tech than Lion ( read - safer / indestructible).

 

[bpong]

the advantage of having the ability to change the type of battery (and battery chemistry) used in the pack will allow inmotion to use any proven new battery technologies.

[mrelwood]

Completely out of the blue for me, the Inmotion CEO steps down:

This makes me worried and wondering, were the plans we’ve heard that of Bob, or Inmotion as a whole? Will a new CEO have different plans?

[techyiam]

I don't think I will wait for Inmotion new wheel releases. Too bad.

[Funky]

1 hour ago, mrelwood said:

Completely out of the blue for me, the Inmotion CEO steps down:

This makes me worried and wondering, were the plans we’ve heard that of Bob, or Inmotion as a whole? Will a new CEO have different plans?

So.. Are you still willing to buy first batch?

If i understand Bob was the "big man" of Inmotion? Every choice, etc where going true him?

As new CEO rises - every plan can get changed. (But as wheels are already in development, i don't think they will change that much - at least "this" next release.) Now next, next wheels can be very different..

 

As i already said after that "video" - It's all only talk.. Let's see new CEO plans. (One can hope they stop making monster EUC's.)  

Edited June 19, 2023 by Funky

[mrelwood]

34 minutes ago, Funky said:

So.. Are you still willing to buy first batch?

Though question. I’m not completely sure. Bob’s vision was a big part of why I trust in Inmotion and their future. I would think though that a new CEO is presented well before the launch of their next wheel, so I hope I’ll have a good amount of time to make up my mind.

34 minutes ago, Funky said:

If i understand Bob was the "big man" of Inmotion? Every choice, etc where going true him?

I don’t think companies of this size are run as one man dictatorships. I’d guess that there’s a board of directors that determine the major decisions.

34 minutes ago, Funky said:

(But as wheels are already in development, i don't think they will change that much - at least "this" next release.)

Exactly.

40 minutes ago, Funky said:

One can hope they stop making monster EUC's.

You speak in plural, though they have made just one monster so far… 

[Funky]

33 minutes ago, mrelwood said:

You speak in plural, though they have made just one monster so far… 

1 two many.. I didn't even notice that they have only V13.. Rest are around ~30kg. (The perfect wheel weight in my mind.)

Other companies should follow their lead.  (Aside from making 1 wheel every 2 years..)

Edited June 19, 2023 by Funky

[UPONIT]

@mrelwood I have so many follow-up questions.

How DO Chinese companies work?

IS there a Board of Directors that the CEO answers to?

Who would be on the Board of an EUC company?

Was Bob the founder of the company?

Is InMotion Board an American-style Board? "We want to wring every bit of profit out of this company. Enough with the expensive safety systems and high-quality materials. Nobody appreciated them anyway. We want quick, cheap and loud. NOW!"