InMotion V8 tried to kill me Suddenly

[charlesrg]

Today I was riding my V8 on my daily commute like I've been doing it for 2 months. I was around 15mph on asphalt flat terrain, when suddenly the inmotion v8 gave up and I went body against pavement. It didn't play any different warning sound it just suddenly didn't do anything.

As I've had a couple events where the wheel slowly titled completely and now gave up totally, is there a data logger where I can retrieve the wheel facts of the issue ?? I really want to know if something failed, overheat, frozen, over-speed. I can't really trust it, this thing might be trying to kill me. Maybe it has a buggy firmware, this device must have a log memory that logs every event and then later be retrieved, just like a tesla car.

Facts:

• As I dragged myself to grab it out of the road I noticed the blue lights were still on.
• Temperature this morning 30 degrees Fahrenheit.  About -2 celsius.
• Battery was probably around 92%. I do full charge at home and I had only ridden about 1.5 miles.
• I've set its max speed to be 19mph so the wheel beeps at 16mph and start tilting back. Not sure if it's even possible to go to 19mph as it plays the warning sound and tilts back.
• Yes, lots of cuts, lacerations and pain. Lucky is winter and I was riding with a big jacket. Not sure if I had any major complication as I'm still waiting for the pain to go away.

 

Please let me know how do you guys troubleshoot falls, if I can retrieve logs it will be very useful.\

[Update 2 years later]

I'm still riding the same wheel. About 4 thousand miles yes 4000miles. Never felt again. The reason for the fall was overspeed on a super loud helicopter area. I didn't hear the alert, didn't feel the push back, the weather was also very cold.  After the fall I learn that MAX Speed is not Cruising speed, unlocked Knees Always.

Long story short. I'm very happy with the wheel and just learnt the hard way. This wheel is great. love it every day.

 

[Update almost 3 years later]

Still ride the same wheel and no falls. Very happy with the wheel.

Edited February 6, 2020 by charlesrg
want to make it clear to all that might land here.

[Pingouin]

Hi,

First I'm glad you didn't sustain major injuries.

For your issue it could be related to temperature + speed, at negative temperatures the lithium batteries cannot discharge as much energy as in normal conditions, I had this occuring with a generic EUC, the only proof would be if this occurs again or not with higher temperatures, but I would suggest riding slower until spring is here to test it out. You also may have a faulty unit, or a buggy firmware it's possible, I've seen some V8 riding by -8°C with no issues.

How much do you weight, and where there any bumbs or climbs when it occured ? How do you use the batteries ? (do you leave them fully charged ? do you discharge them to 0% ?)

I don't think it's due to overspeed, as it didn't warn you, plus you were far from the max speed.

[charlesrg]

10 minutes ago, Pingouin said:

Hi,

First I'm glad you didn't sustain major injuries.

For your issue it could be related to temperature + speed, at negative temperatures the lithium batteries cannot discharge as much energy as in normal conditions, I had this occuring with a generic EUC, the only proof would be if this occurs again or not with higher temperatures, but I would suggest riding slower until spring is here to test it out. You also may have a faulty unit, or a buggy firmware it's possible, I've seen some V8 riding by -8°C with no issues.

How much do you weight, and where there any bumbs or climbs when it occured ? How do you use the batteries ? (do you leave them fully charged ? do you discharge them to 0% ?)

I don't think it's due to overspeed, as it didn't warn you, plus you were far from the max speed.

I weight 185 lbs, with my bag and winter clothing the total weight probably goes to 200lbs. Not any major bump. Strange that I rode this same path so many times without issues. Batteries are always fully charged overnight.

So I'm going to lower the speed and hope it not to happen again. Really wanted a way to retrieve logs and find out why did it do it.

[Pingouin]

Not sure it's normal, and I don't know if you can retrieve data from your wheel.

Where did you buy it ? Can you hop to the store and have it checked ? I wouldn't suggest riding it with no fix unless you have to, if you have then I would highly suggest going slow and wearing full protections, and being prepared for a cut (that's not funny at all that's why I would check it first).

[charlesrg]

Bought it from Aliexpress, I could not find anyone local to buy this model.

I'm going to set the speed limiter back to 15mph and ride careful, got motivated to get back to my bike.

[Mono]

6 hours ago, Pingouin said:

I don't think it's due to overspeed, as it didn't warn you

I think @charlesrg wrote

6 hours ago, charlesrg said:

It didn't play any different warning sound

which seems to suggest it was giving a warning.

[Pingouin]

18 minutes ago, Mono said:

I think @charlesrg wrote

which seems to suggest it was giving a warning.

He actually wrote the opposit, the V8 didn't give any warning...

 

6 hours ago, charlesrg said:

Bought it from Aliexpress, I could not find anyone local to buy this model.

I'm going to set the speed limiter back to 15mph and ride careful, got motivated to get back to my bike.

That's a shame, I'm sorry you want to go back to your bike, it's always annoying when something doesn't work as it should. I hope reducing your speed will help :/

[Mono]

4 minutes ago, Pingouin said:

He actually wrote the opposit, the V8 didn't give any warning...

I gave the exact quote of what he wrote, so saying he wrote the opposite is a little bit odd.

I guess we have some chance to find out what he meant 

Edited March 6, 2017 by Mono

[Pingouin]

2 minutes ago, Mono said:

I gave the exact quote of what he wrote, so saying he wrote the opposite is a little bit odd.

I guess we have some chance to find out what he meant 

I mean, he wrote the opposit of your sentence "which seems to suggest it was giving a warning" but I don't see where we are going with this ? It doesn't really help to solve the issue does it ?

[Mono]

25 minutes ago, Pingouin said:

It doesn't really help to solve the issue does it ?

Yes, it would help to know whether or not speed warnings were noted by the rider. You even used missing warnings as a reason to exclude one possible cause of the accident "I don't think it's due to overspeed, as it didn't warn you". 

He wrote "didn't play any different warning sound" which you seem to read as "didn't play any warning sound" and I read it as not different from the usual warning sound. Surely we can't possibly know what he meant 

Edited March 6, 2017 by Mono

[steve454]

8 hours ago, charlesrg said:

Today I was riding my V8 on my daily commute like I've been doing it for 2 months. I was around 15mph on asphalt flat terrain, when suddenly the inmotion v8 gave up and I went body against pavement. It didn't play any different warning sound it just suddenly didn't do anything.

As I've had a couple events where the wheel slowly titled completely and now gave up totally, is there a data logger where I can retrieve the wheel facts of the issue ?? I really want to know if something failed, overheat, frozen, over-speed. I can't really trust it, this thing might be trying to kill me. Maybe it has a buggy firmware, this device must have a log memory that logs every event and then later be retrieved, just like a tesla car.

Facts:

• As I dragged myself to grab it out of the road I noticed the blue lights were still on.
• Temperature this morning 30 degrees Fahrenheit.  About -2 celsius.
• Battery was probably around 92%. I do full charge at home and I had only ridden about 1.5 miles.
• I've set its max speed to be 19mph so the wheel beeps at 16mph and start tilting back. Not sure if it's even possible to go to 19mph as it plays the warning sound and tilts back.
• Yes, lots of cuts, lacerations and pain. Lucky is winter and I was riding with a big jacket. Not sure if I had any major complication as I'm still waiting for the pain to go away.

 

Please let me know how do you guys troubleshoot falls, if I can retrieve logs it will be very useful.

You could go to the Ewheels website and call Jason Mcneil.   He is an Inmotion dealer in Florida.  Also check your app for a black box feedback option, Ninebot has it, maybe the newer wheels have it also.

[charlesrg]

17 hours ago, Mono said:

Yes, it would help to know whether or not speed warnings were noted by the rider. You even used missing warnings as a reason to exclude one possible cause of the accident "I don't think it's due to overspeed, as it didn't warn you". 

He wrote "didn't play any different warning sound" which you seem to read as "didn't play any warning sound" and I read it as not different from the usual warning sound. Surely we can't possibly know what he meant 

Sorry for the ambiguity on my writing. I did not hear any warning sound at the time the issue happened.

I heard the speed warning sound many times before, at times I even tried to keep going faster while the noise was on, but during the crash it just cut without a warning.

I really wish to get logs from the wheel where all those questions could be answered. Perhaps I could not hear the warning because of an ambulance. The data log would be a must to investigate this fall.

I'm going to see if Jason could shed some light, at the same time will reach to inmotion.

The max speed limit advertised is 19mph, the warning sound comes at 16mph

Edited March 7, 2017 by charlesrg

[houseofjob]

@charlesrg are you relatively new to EUC? If so, were you accelerating gradually or doing a hard acceleration?

If the latter, this sounds suspiciously like an overlean cutout, ie. there is a limit to how fast you can accelerate on any EUC before it cutsout / stops balancing. An EUC is especially susceptible in cold weather, ie. reduced battery conditions.

 

And if not, you might have been sent a bad V8 unit, especially seeing as, based on your other forum posts, it seems your unit was not intended for the US market (along with any other distributor connivery).

AFAIK, I have yet to hear of any V8 owners who bought from super-distributor @Jason McNeil / eWheels.com (the exclusive US InMotion dealer, based out of Miami, FL) that have experienced much issue (including myself). 

Another rider from our NYC group has experienced some issue with his V8 (bought off AliExpress) regarding top speed / tiltback (can't remember the exact issue offhand).

 

Re: logs, the InMotion app has a Diagnostics function:

1. launch InMotion app
2. lower SCV tab > press bluetooth icon (bottom left) to connect wheel
3. swipe left to second page > press Diagnose icon (top middle)
4. press "Upload Log" (top right) (takes awhile)
5. when done, press Diagnose button (top middle)

I might be mistaken, but the InMotion app can only upload the wheel's log and diagnose; you cannot manipulate it on your end locally.

[charlesrg]

1 hour ago, houseofjob said:

@charlesrg are you relatively new to EUC? If so, were you accelerating gradually or doing a hard acceleration?

If the latter, this sounds suspiciously like an overlean cutout, ie. there is a limit to how fast you can accelerate on any EUC before it cutsout / stops balancing. An EUC is especially susceptible in cold weather, ie. reduced battery conditions.

 

And if not, you might have been sent a bad V8 unit, especially seeing as, based on your other forum posts, it seems your unit was not intended for the US market (along with any other distributor connivery).

AFAIK, I have yet to hear of any V8 owners who bought from super-distributor @Jason McNeil / eWheels.com (the exclusive US InMotion dealer, based out of Miami, FL) that have experienced much issue (including myself). 

Another rider from our NYC group has experienced some issue with his V8 (bought off AliExpress) regarding top speed / tiltback (can't remember the exact issue offhand).

 

Re: logs, the InMotion app has a Diagnostics function:

1. launch InMotion app
2. lower SCV tab > press bluetooth icon (bottom left) to connect wheel
3. swipe left to second page > press Diagnose icon (top middle)
4. press "Upload Log" (top right) (takes awhile)
5. when done, press Diagnose button (top middle)

I might be mistaken, but the InMotion app can only upload the wheel's log and diagnose; you cannot manipulate it on your end locally.

Thank you, I saw the upload log feature. I will try that, I thought it would only upload stuff to them, good to know that I can diagnose after.

Will post after I read the logs tonight.

[KalSeth]

To weigh in, I am going to guess it is cold temperture related.

Batterys only have about half their power in cold weather.

Glad you are ok.  Do not give up on wheeling yet.

[charlesrg]

On 3/7/2017 at 11:55 AM, houseofjob said:

@charlesrg are you relatively new to EUC? If so, were you accelerating gradually or doing a hard acceleration?

If the latter, this sounds suspiciously like an overlean cutout, ie. there is a limit to how fast you can accelerate on any EUC before it cutsout / stops balancing. An EUC is especially susceptible in cold weather, ie. reduced battery conditions.

 

And if not, you might have been sent a bad V8 unit, especially seeing as, based on your other forum posts, it seems your unit was not intended for the US market (along with any other distributor connivery).

AFAIK, I have yet to hear of any V8 owners who bought from super-distributor @Jason McNeil / eWheels.com (the exclusive US InMotion dealer, based out of Miami, FL) that have experienced much issue (including myself). 

Another rider from our NYC group has experienced some issue with his V8 (bought off AliExpress) regarding top speed / tiltback (can't remember the exact issue offhand).

 

Re: logs, the InMotion app has a Diagnostics function:

1. launch InMotion app
2. lower SCV tab > press bluetooth icon (bottom left) to connect wheel
3. swipe left to second page > press Diagnose icon (top middle)
4. press "Upload Log" (top right) (takes awhile)
5. when done, press Diagnose button (top middle)

I might be mistaken, but the InMotion app can only upload the wheel's log and diagnose; you cannot manipulate it on your end locally.

I run diagnostics and all passed. I also did the Upload, but after the upload it just says done. It does not show me a place I could read the logs.

Going to research on it.

[houseofjob]

7 minutes ago, charlesrg said:

I run diagnostics and all passed. I also did the Upload, but after the upload it just says done. It does not show me a place I could read the logs.

Going to research on it.

Upload, then diagnose, not the other way around (otherwise, I believe you will be diagnosing either no data, or the last downloaded data log).

As I said before, you cannot download and manipulate, i.e. read, the log on your end. You need to PM one of the InMotion engineers who are members on the app (not sure if their English is up to par though, very unlikely).

[charlesrg]

diagnose just reads the wheel sensors, does not seem to analyze the logs.

 

[houseofjob]

4 minutes ago, charlesrg said:

diagnose just reads the wheel sensors, does not seem to analyze the logs.

Okay, might've been mistaken as I've yet to find a full explanation on all of this anywhere, in and outside of the InMotion app.

I've also heard the InMotion engineers have answered user issues, but these murmurings were indirectly from the Singaporean InMotion community.

 

Good luck in your quest and please report back!

Edited March 8, 2017 by houseofjob

[charlesrg]

Sure, here is the upload screenshot in case someone needs to find it.

[steve454]

On 3/7/2017 at 10:55 AM, houseofjob said:

were you accelerating gradually or doing a hard acceleration?

If the latter, this sounds suspiciously like an overlean cutout, ie. there is a limit to how fast you can accelerate on any EUC before it cutsout / stops balancing.

If it was an overlean cutout, that might show up in the log but not register as an error.  I ran the black box on my Ninebot and could not read the data until I downloaded some office suite for android, think it was windows office or something.  Then, even after being able to open and see the data, it told me nothing useful, just a lot of numbers that probably an engineer could make sense of.  I was hoping for something in plain english, like speeds and temperatures, or a graph or something.  Or even a red flag or something, but maybe the Inmotion is more advanced, it is newer technology after all.  I wish you good luck and if you find anything please let us know.

I didn't have anything wrong with the Ninebot, was only testing the black box function.

Edited March 9, 2017 by steve454
added last sentence

[Chris Westland]

I would be willing to bet that your problem results from the LG batteries in the V8.   Most of the EUC's on this site use specific Samsung and Panasonic batteries that work well for the demands of EUC's (high current draws across a broad temperature range).  The LG MH1s are even better and a bit more expensive, but I'm guessing that their chemistry or anodes are also more sensitive to temperature than other EUC batteries.  

 

I've been riding my V8 on Chicago's Lakeshore in roughly 25F to 55F temperatures, and I find there is a sweet spot above 45F where the battery tends to work well.   At less than 45F, I typically only get about 8 miles, and the yellow/red lights show up.  On normal rides in weather above 45F I get close to 30 miles with adequate (blue bars) power.  When it is cold, if I get off and walk the unit for about 5-10 minutes, it comes back up to 4 bar blues, but then tends to drop pretty quickly with any further riding.  It seems the battery doesn't discharge well below 45F (I've had to Uber it back home a few times).  

 

Inmotion, being in Shenzhen, probably doesn't see much weather below 60F.  So the Inmotion engineers may not be aware of this problem.  But if the current draw suddenly drops (e.g., accelerating in cold weather) this will starve the electronics of power that their capacitors can't smooth.  If the software isn't aware of this, you can have a complete failure. 

 

Inmotion has their HQ a few miles away from drone maker DJI in Shenzhen, and I think that they could learn a few things from DJI.  DJI's newer systems have controls that heat the batteries so that the stay in an effective range (as just like EUC's, battery failure can be catastrophic).  Sure it may cost a few miles of range to heat the battery, but it would be worth it for a more reliable wheel.  

 

Also, if Inmotion ever decides to go to a truly replaceable battery, they might look at what DJI has done with their Phantom and Mavic drones.  The locking mechanism is very solid in all DJI's products.  DJI also appear to be compressing the LiPo batteries to pull charge out of them faster; the downside to compression is that batteries are also short lived, for only around 150 cycles max.  Quads require reliable, high powered discharge in pretty low temperatures, so there may be some part of that technology that Inmotion could use.  

 

BTW, battery heater bags are standard kit in RC electric flying, so this technology is not particularly exotic ... see https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-programmable-lipo-battery-warmer-bag-12v-dc.html/?___store=en_us

Edited March 9, 2017 by Chris Westland

[houseofjob]

@Chris Westland One day EUCs will have Tesla-style battery heating AND cooling. Let's hope that day comes sooner than later!

[Chris Westland]

34 minutes ago, houseofjob said:

@Chris Westland One day EUCs will have Tesla-style battery heating AND cooling. Let's hope that day comes sooner than later!

How do these systems work?  I recall the original Tesla battery packs ran distilled water through them (but they used Panasonic lithium cells, like EUCs).  Currently Tesla makes their own bespoke  battery packs.  Do they still use a fluid to heat and cool?

OK, sort of answered my own question ... here is a nice article from Insite EV's ....http://insideevs.com/tesla-or-gm-who-has-the-best-battery-thermal-management-bower/

Edited March 9, 2017 by Chris Westland

[houseofjob]

Just now, Chris Westland said:

How do these systems work?  I recall the original Tesla battery packs ran distilled water through them (but they used Panasonic lithium cells, like EUCs).  Currently Tesla makes their own bespoke  battery packs.  Do they still use a fluid to heat and cool?

Can't profess to be the most knowledgeable about Tesla batteries, but this YouTube Tesla battery teardown vid shows draining of coolant:

 

And FWIW, both my folks own Model S's, and they clearly make noise in the garage when not in use, and temperatures are at extremes (hottest summer, coldest winter); so they are most definitely regulating battery temperature.