Encourage Gotway change with my wallet

[Duf]

So I have been somewhat vocal in expressing my feelings about the long list of Gotway blunders or outright negligence when it comes to the manufacturing/design process of their wheels.  Although I personally have never had a catastrophic failure of my 67v Msuper V3 or Monster, I have seen so many examples of this from other Gotway owners it makes my head spin.  The bottom line is although I do like my two Gotway wheels, I don't condone the company position of pushing safety and build quality way down on the priority list.  Of course if the demand for Gotway wheels remains high, despite their shoddy work, what is their real reason to change?

So anyway, in my own little EUC world, enough is finally enough.  I was targeting a new ACM as the 16 inch wheel in my collection but I am now thinking a Kingsong 16S will be filling that role instead.  It's more than fast and powerful enough for me, has a durable case, integrated trolley handle, a better app, more interesting lighting, speakers and a battery on par with my Msuper,  I feel the only true way Gotway will understand there are consequences for their business decisions is through declining sales numbers.  Although my deciding to invest my dollars somewhere else might not make a bit of difference to them, if enough people start expressing their feelings through dollars they will need to finally make some real changes to their manufacturing/testing/safety practices.

[Maximus]

Hard to argue with this. If I were purchasing now instead of back in April I might be making a similar decision. 

[Duf]

2 hours ago, Maximus said:

Hard to argue with this. If I were purchasing now instead of back in April I might be making a similar decision. 

Yep plus it will be cool to add another brand to my fleet.

[Dingfelder]

If Gotway is like many businesses, they will not just judge their success by their own profit margins and how many units they sell, but judge their losses by how their competitors are doing.   Even if they never feel the loss of your future purchase directly in their own pocketbook, it could still hurt simply by strengthening a competitor's hand.

jason's site lists the KS16s as capable of handling 300 pounds (I run at 205 to 215 depending on donuts) making it look like a serious contender for many heavier riders and/or people who might subject it to difficult terrain.  If I wind up getting a new wheel in the future, the KS16 line might well be the models I look to first.  

Spreading the wealth around to keep the market vital sounds like a good idea.

12 hours ago, Maximus said:

Hard to argue with this. If I were purchasing now instead of back in April I might be making a similar decision. 

Me too.

[Adel]

14 hours ago, Duf said:

 

So anyway, in my own little EUC world, enough is finally enough.  I was targeting a new ACM as the 16 inch wheel in my collection but I am now thinking a Kingsong 16S will be filling that role instead.  It's more than fast and powerful enough for me, has a durable case, integrated trolley handle, a better app, more interesting lighting, speakers and a battery on par with my Msuper,  I feel the only true way Gotway will understand there are consequences for their business decisions is through declining sales numbers.  Although my deciding to invest my dollars somewhere else might not make a bit of difference to them, if enough people start expressing their feelings through dollars they will need to finally make some real changes to their manufacturing/testing/safety practices.

You'll enjoy the KS16. The only reason Gotway enjoyed some success is that for some unexplainable reason all other manufacturers have completely conceded the > 16" EUC market. Personally I would love to see new entries in that segment from Inmotion and Kingsong (forget ks18, too tall). What are they waiting for ? 

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

I think it may be a mistake to presume that Gotway doesn't take quality and safety as high priorities.  It may be more of a case that other companies may have engineers who are more familiar with what works and what doesn't on their team.  For a small company of 16 to 30 people, the experience and knowledge of that small team has a large influence on the end product.  Hiring the right people isn't always easy.

Also the specific market that a company caters to can vary with expectations.  In that one Serpentza video about China, he gives some insight as what some of the expectations of the typical Chinese consumer is.  A lot of products sold there are made as cheap as possible including motorcycle knock offs.  People there might be more accepting of a certain level of quality versus people used to higher quality in a diferent country.  Say if Gotway's majority of purchasers are in China, they may not see a huge need to go all Lexus-quality for their product line as people likely will just upgrade to the next model in a short period of time.

They do appear to be responsive of the concerns that their out of country dealers are bringing up so that is a good sign.  They addressed connector issues and motor wiring even though no motor wire issues were reported.  They likely have an ear to these forums so they are making improvements.  If they really didn't care they would basically say "Thank you dear, we will forward your concerns to our engineers," and that would be the last you hear of it without any real changes at all.

Simply judging by videos and reports, it appears that KingSong and InMotion are likely larger companies with more talent, equity and equipment at their disposal.  For a smaller company, Gotway is holding their own quite well in their performance specifications.  Given time and maybe more qualified staff (eg. Design engineers, QA professionals, etc) I am certain their products will improve.  Remember that we are still in the Model T version 1 or 2 era of development.  In 1908 the first Model T rolled out of the plant.  Fast forward almost 110 years later, and we are entering what, year 2 or 3 for these EUC devices?  Give it another 2-5 years, and I bet most of the quirks will be gone.

We all are passionate and eager for the latest and greatest and safest, but I think we should be reasonable and try to be patient for companies to meet our expectations and understand that they are most likely trying their best.  These are exciting times we live in so enjoy them while you can!

[esaj]

While I like the idea of using a sort of a boycott to force the manufacturers to step up their QA & design, I still keep repeating the same old mantra I have for the last couple of years: No wheel is ever 100% safe. I nowadays ride KS16's (B & S), and despite that their track record on quality at least seems better, I still wear full armor (kneepads going down to ankles, elbow pads, double-splinted wrist guards that reach halfway to my elbow, full-face motorcycle helmet, boots) when riding. Although the units I have hadn't have any issues (so far, it's still early days with less than 500km clocked in with both combined ), and I at times go at high speeds (for KSs), I don't trust the wheels   It's still just a single wheel touching ground on the area smaller than the size of your palm, and the only thing keeping you from falling is complex electronics circuitry and a piece of software. Electrical components and battery cells age with time and use. Firmwares can have bugs, some of which might not occur except in very special niche-cases that were totally unforeseen and which a vast majority of riders never encounter. Mechanical components wear out. Moisture can condense inside the compartments. The list of things that could go wrong is very long. You may be able to run 20-25km/h sprint if starting from standstill and picking up pace, maybe even faster, but doing that on a split-second notice when the wheel fails under you without a warning, from a standing position, is a whole another matter. Likely your knees/hands/face has met the pavement before you even have time to react at high speeds.

Even with that said, certainly I would welcome the use of better QA on all manufacturers, audits, higher grade components, built-in redundancies etc... Likely it would push up the prices a lot. But even with all that, the risk of the unit failing will never go to 0%. Cars are a good example in the sense that the component tolerances and standards requirements are much higher, still they break down at times, but at least you can likely brake to stop at that point. An old school mate of mine from polytechnic works in Max Planck Institute in Germany, doing electronics component QA for satellites. For a single component that goes into the actual device, they go through hundreds if not thousands of specimens and only pick "the best of the best" (and probably start with the most expensive, highest military-grade components to begin with). It pushes up the component prices 100- or 1000-fold (from a single component price, military-grade components are more expensive than the commercial or automotive anyway, so compared to commercial grade, it's probably more like 10000-fold), as most are discarded (or used in less critical applications?), but there it makes sense, because you can't actually send a repair technician to exchange a failed component afterwards

[johrhoj]

20 hours ago, Duf said:

So anyway, in my own little EUC world, enough is finally enough.  I was targeting a new ACM as the 16 inch wheel in my collection but I am now thinking a Kingsong 16S will be filling that role instead.  It's more than fast and powerful enough for me, has a durable case, integrated trolley handle, a better app, more interesting lighting, speakers and a battery on par with my Msuper,  I feel the only true way Gotway will understand there are consequences for their business decisions is through declining sales numbers. 

Although I cannot deny you your own logic, it does not uphold for me.

My KS broke down, my GW did not. But more important: My riding experience with my GW is so much better, that I will not go back to KS for a while. My added joy riding GW in stead of riding KS remains a huge selling point for GW, no matter all the cold facts about distance and speed.

[Rehab1]

Gotway could use commercial grade electrical components in their designs and still make a huge profit! Yes I know there are R&D costs, die molds, building and employee costs, etc but let's take a look at the costs of the actual components that go into building one of their wheels.

The two main electrical components: The main board and the motor. Having just replaced both units on my ACM 1600 I am familiar with the cost. Both the motor and the mainboard combined, including shipping, cost around $350 retail. What do you assume GW's cost is....$100- $150? I would only be guessing but I'm sure their is a huge profit margin.

What's left? Mostly non electrical components which include injection molded shells, tire and tube, cast aluminum pedals and hangers, a sundry of hardware including screws, bolts, bearings, connectors, led light bulbs and battery indicator, hall sensors, wire, padding etc. I will be generous on this figure, say $150. 

The point is there's a huge profit which is  fine but upgrading to commerical grade components would only increase the cost of manufacturing a higher quality wheel slightly. 

Consider the commercial hall sensors I purchased and was installing in my ACM.  Each cost retail 80 cents total for the three $2.40. I could not believe how much more durable the leads coming off the sensors were. I could easily bend them back and forth 10Xs before they would fatigue. If you were to do that test as I did with the GW hall sensors the leads would break after 2 rounds! 

In my opinion Gotway could easily manufacture a much safer and more durable wheel if they wanted to without compromising profitability which would in turn build their customer base. It would be great to someday see a mission statement on their website stating something in the order of:

"Gotway's mission is to become the leading supplier of electric unicycles worldwide-through innovation, safety, and enhancement of customer service!"

[vladmarks]

28 minutes ago, johrhoj said:

My KS broke down, my GW did not.

That's the very thing we're so passionately discuss in this topic

The added joy is obviously a massive plus, but don't let your guard down! Whether it's KS or GW or IM - every wheel is prone to develop a fault. Having a forum like this is a blessing on its own, as you can at least act preventive if a certain fault is reported more frequently

 

1 minute ago, Rehab1 said:

"Gotway's mission is to become the leading supplier of electric unicycles worldwide-through innovation, safety, and enhancement of customer service!"

Come on, we have to have a sort of competition for safety, too?  Jokes aside, this should be a prime target for all manufacturers who head into +20km/h zone. 

[esaj]

55 minutes ago, Rehab1 said:

Gotway could use commercial grade electrical components in their designs and still make a huge profit! Yes I know there are R&D costs, die molds, building and employee costs, etc but let's take a look at the costs of the actual components that go into building one of their wheels.

The two main electrical components: The main board and the motor. Having just replaced both units on my ACM 1600 I am familiar with the cost. Both the motor and the mainboard combined, including shipping, cost around $350 retail. What do you assume GW's cost is....$100- $150? I would only be guessing but I'm sure their is a huge profit margin.

What's left? Mostly non electrical components which include injection molded shells, tire and tube, cast aluminum pedals and hangers, a sundry of hardware including screws, bolts, bearings, connectors, led light bulbs and battery indicator, hall sensors, wire, padding etc. I will be generous on this figure, say $150. 

The point is there's a huge profit which is  fine but upgrading to commerical grade components would only increase the cost of manufacturing a higher quality wheel slightly. 

Consider the commercial hall sensors I purchased and was installing in my ACM.  Each cost retail 80 cents total for the three $2.40. I could not believe how much more durable the leads coming off the sensors were. I could easily bend them back and forth 10Xs before they would fatigue. If you were to do that test as I did with the GW hall sensors the leads would break after 2 rounds! 

In my opinion Gotway could easily manufacture a much safer and more durable wheel if they wanted to without compromising profitability which would in turn build their customer base. It would be great to someday see a mission statement on their website stating: 

"Gotway's mission is to become the leading supplier of electric unicycles worldwide-through innovation, safety, and enhancement of customer service!"

I know it's nitpicking, but the commercial-grade is the (official) lowest and cheapest grade in components. I haven't checked the IC-markings to see what grade the components (supposedly) are, I was just using the commercial-grade as comparison in the satellite-example. The next ones are typically industrial-, automotive and military-grade, separate medical-grade for some components. For most components the difference is mostly with the allowed operating temperature range, but possibly higher grades can have tighter tolerances and/or less sensitivity to noise, higher data retention time for *ROM-chips and such.

Temperatures are ambient:

Standard commercial temperature range is 0°C to 70°C

Old industrial temperature range is -25°C to 85°C (some parts are
still available in this range)

Modern industrial temperature range is -40°C to 85°C

Automotive temperature range is -40°C to 125°C

Military temperature range is -55°C to 125°C

As usual, those values shouldn't be read as "absolute", meaning that a commercial-grade chip with 0-70C temperature range probably doesn't stop working at -0.1C or 70.1C, but there are no guarantees outside the ranges. 

@Tilmann mentioned the "electronics mall(s)" in Shenzhen that sell all kinds of components from small booths, and if the components for the wheel boards are bought from such places, I wouldn't be really surprised if at least some of them are factory rejects that haven't fulfilled the tolerance-specs or such (and should have been destroyed, but seem to often end up being sold in "gray markets", like those malls or eBay / Aliexpress etc). I use mostly Aliexpress components for my own stuff, but there's never any guarantee whether they're actually up to spec, used or even counterfeit. At least the resistors have always been up to spec, but for other stuff, who knows?  I have had some weird failures that could be up to bad components, but might as well be my own designs   And most of the time, the components have worked without a hitch. When I specifically need components that must be within the spec, I use ones ordered from large, well-known suppliers, so if things go south then I know it was my design and not the components  

As for the board prices, for mass-produced products, the price of boards & components goes down fast with volume, so the cost of manufacturing is peanuts. In here, you can walk to a store and buy a WiFi-station for as low as 20€ (something like $22.50) or entire cellphones (not smartphones, but the more basic "feature phones") for around 30-40€. That's on retail, so it already includes all the costs of manufacturing, shipping, import taxes, 24% VAT (in here, different for different countries), retail profit margin etc. Another example on manufacturing prices could be 32GB iPhone 7 that is estimated to cost about $220 for components + about $5 to assemble and test (so board with components + battery + shell + display + assembly + testing, the whole thing = $225) per piece, with the display being the most expensive component, around $43 ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/09/23/apples-iphone-7-costs-just-220-to-make/ )

With more specialized products, like the wheels, the price of the board is likely somewhat higher, due to smaller volumes, but still when done in bulk, they likely are a few tens of dollars per piece, if that, with the mosfets probably being the most expensive parts, the MPU and gyro-chips have a combined cost about as much as one or two mosfets, depending on mosfet model (in single pieces looking at "normal" retail prices) and the Bluetooth-modules seem to be the same ones you can buy off Ali for something like $2-3 per piece, the rest of the components are very cheap (SMD resistors and caps in bulk are something like way below 1 cent per piece, probably more like < 0.1 cent, the bigger electrolytic caps could be some tens of cents?). Imported battery cells and the motors are likely the most expensive parts. Shells are tricky, making the mold can be very expensive (depending on size and complexity, I think the Gotway boss said in some interview video posted to the forums that the only thing they needed to take a loan out for in the beginning was to make the shell molds, everything else was cheap), but after the mold is made, the price per shell piece isn't much. It also explains the reluctance of companies to make changes to the shells (KS16S has new mainboard, batteries and motor, but still uses the old shells).

[Duf]

2 hours ago, johrhoj said:

Although I cannot deny you your own logic, it does not uphold for me.

My KS broke down, my GW did not. But more important: My riding experience with my GW is so much better, that I will not go back to KS for a while. My added joy riding GW in stead of riding KS remains a huge selling point for GW, no matter all the cold facts about distance and speed.

I hear you but with the KS16S  I am not sacrificing much as far as power and speed.  Sure the battery is smaller than a new ACM but I don't want to ride 50 miles on a 16 inch wheel anyway, I have my Monster for that.

[Rehab1]

3 hours ago, esaj said:

I know it's nitpicking, but the commercial-grade is the (official) lowest and cheapest grade in components. I haven't checked the IC-markings to see what grade the components (supposedly) are, I was just using the commercial-grade as comparison in the satellite-example.

That is not nitpicking at all. In the US commercial grade is considered higher quality but certainly not in the category of industrial or military grade. Ok I will switch my request to industrial or automotive grade as the military quality might be cost prohibitive.

[Dingfelder]

1 hour ago, Duf said:

I hear you but with the KS16S  I am not sacrificing much as far as power and speed.  Sure the battery is smaller than a new ACM but I don't want to ride 50 miles on a 16 inch wheel anyway, I have my Monster for that.

I'm just curious how the KS16s will work off-road.  Pedal clearance, general comfort and ability to handle roots and sticks and such.  Marty has immense praise for the ACM, but I haven't seen him riding his on the kind of ground I've seen him ride the monster on.

And I can't recall what the ground was like when you did your alligator adventure video, but I think all your other videos show you on pavement ... maybe just a bit of grass on rare occasion, but of the well-kept park type of grass.

I guess what I'm thinking is that even an ideal 16 inch wheel might fall short on many trails ... what do you think?  

[Dingfelder]

50 minutes ago, Rehab1 said:

That is not nitpicking at all. In the US commercial grade is considered high quality but certainly not in the category of industrial or military grade. Ok I switch my request to industrial or automotive grade as the military quality might be cost prohibitive.

I used to work for a furniture manufacturer, and common usage there was that consumer level furniture is what almost everybody buys, and commercial-grade furnishings were made for places like hotels, where crazy guests and their kids could be counted on to heedlessly bang into and jump on stuff the way they'd never dream of doing in their own homes.  It was a casual term, and we all knew what it meant, but there was no single specific metric we all agreed on.

I guess it varies industry by industry.

[Duf]

27 minutes ago, Dingfelder said:

I'm just curious how the KS16s will work off-road.  Pedal clearance, general comfort and ability to handle roots and sticks and such.  Marty has immense praise for the ACM, but I haven't seen him riding his on the kind of ground I've seen him ride the monster on.

And I can't recall what the ground was like when you did your alligator adventure video, but I think all your other videos show you on pavement ... maybe just a bit of grass on rare occasion, but of the well-kept park type of grass.

I guess what I'm thinking is that even an ideal 16 inch wheel might fall short on many trails ... what do you think?  

Well I think there is some give and take with the ACM for offroad.  It has the most torque probably of any Gotway wheel which is great for off road climbing and stopping but the wheel diameter means lower ground clearance and less stability.  I am almost always on road or grass and with that being the case, a 22mph KS16S will suit me fine and from the reviews I have read it's acceleration and braking is much improved over the prior generation.

[kour]

35 minutes ago, Dingfelder said:

I guess what I'm thinking is that even an ideal 16 inch wheel might fall short on many trails ... what do you think?

this is eu guy riding high speed on what looks to be a pretty rocky trail:

 

[Dingfelder]

Yeah it does.  Great ride.

Almost at the end, his toes come very close to touching the pavement at what's still a good clip.  I'm sure he knows what he's doing, but that did look a little scary.  With my size 12 1/2 feet, I could see that turning out badly for me ...