Future Motion, the maker of the Onewheel electric skateboard, is recalling every one of them, including 300,000 Onewheel self-balancing vehicles in the US. Alongside the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the company now seeks to remedy the products after four known death cases — three without a helmet — between 2019 and 2021.
The recall comes a year after Future Motion took issue with the CPSC’s calls for recall and claimed that it tested and found nothing wrong with the Onewheels. At the time, the company issued a press release in objection to the CPSC and called the agency’s statements “unjustified and alarmist.”
Now Future Motion is moving forward with a voluntary recall it chose not to do almost a year earlier. The company is asking owners to stop using their Onewheels until they take appropriate action. For the newer Onewheel GT, Onewheel Pint X, Onewheel Pint, and Onewheel Plus XR, a software update with a new warning system is the remedy.
For early adopters, however, the CPSC and Future Motion are telling owners to stop using and discard the original Onewheel and Onewheel Plus. We asked Onewheel chief evangelist Jack Mudd in an email how many of the original units are affected, but Mudd refused to answer. Mudd also wouldn’t tell us why the company claimed there were no issues and publicly resisted issuing a recall back in 2022.
Mudd did say that the software update for the other models is rolling out worldwide, not just in the US.
Some crashes occurred due to Onewheel skateboards malfunctioning after being pushed to certain limits. The Onewheel GT, Onewheel Pint X, Onewheel Pint, and Onewheel Plus XR will receive a firmware update that will add a new warning “Haptic Buzz” feedback that riders can feel and hear when the vehicle enters an error state, is low on battery, or is nearing its limits and needs to slow down.
“This update is the culmination of months of work with the CPSC,” reads the company’s recall website. Last November, it called the CPSC’s warning about Onewheels “misleading” but stated it would “work to enhance the CPSC’s understanding of self-balancing vehicle technology and seek to collaborate with the agency to enhance rider safety.”
To install the update, owners must connect their Onewheels to the accompanying app and run a firmware update — the process is fully explained in a new video.
For early adopters, however, owners can receive a “pro-rated credit of $100 to the purchase of a new board,” according to Mudd. The credit will only be issued after owners confirm that they have disposed of the old model.
Alongside Future Motion’s blink on the decision to recall Onewheel, the company shared a new video on YouTube highlighting the new Haptic Buzz feature as well as best practices when riding. “We’ve been working closely with the CPSC for over a year in order to develop this new safety feature,” Mudd says in the video. He adds that ignoring pushback or Haptic Buzz “can result in serious injury or death.” It took engineers a while to whip up Haptic Buzz; perhaps it’s something that would not have been ready in a timely fashion after CPSC’s first whistle last year.
This is my impression as well. Part of this problem is surely an operator error issue, combined with the inherent way these self balancing machines work. Sure, warnings and limiters can be added in software but this can never actually supersede the laws of physics. Where there's a will to fuck up, someone will find it. And also, like, wear a fuckin' helmet.
So, if you ride your Onewheel to the absolute top end of its motor's maximum speed such that it has no reserve power left with which to balance you, well, you can potentially eat shit. But, try flying down a big hill on a regular bicycle and needing to come to a stop, so you grab both brake levers as hard as you can. Guess what happens if you do that? So, where's my recall on every single bicycle ever manufactured in the world, ever, due to the "design flaw" of having to obey physics? (Yes, I am aware fancypants mountain bikes with hydraulic brakes can now be had with ABS, if you feel like paying for it. This, perhaps, serves even more to drive home my point that no one has seen fit to recall or ban the bikes that don't have this feature, despite it now existing.)
Part of this maybe a flaw in the product design, but another part of it is our perspective of the "acceptable" risks inherent in a particular design shifting dramatically over time, in inconsistent ways.
I mean, if there's not enough power left over to power the safety systems, then it's an engineering failure, not operator error.
I think with your bikes example, one of the factors is also that riding a bike is considered one of those fundamental skills in our society. You learn it early and internalize the rules of the machine. When bikes were knew, we absolutely had more tolerance for risk, so we didn't really care that people were getting hurt learning the ropes, and now that it's a staple we take for granted that people will be guided early on by more experienced riders. That's just not the case for something new. There isn't the widespread understanding of the device or any early training. It also helps that a bike is mechanical, so it's a bit easier to predict than something electronic, and of course the difference in safety standards now vs when bikes were new. So yeah, if bikes were just becoming a thing, we probably would feel different about their level of safety.
But I agree that anyone who wouldn't wear a helmet on one of these probably doesn't have much to protect up there anyway or is a literal child.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
The types of biking are very well rooted in modern first world societies, especially in the US. Granted, I work with bikes, so I'm biased, take that into consideration with what I say.
MOUNTAIN biking is for? Mountains. Rugged terrain. ROAD biking is? For roads. Shocker, I know.
"hybrids" are still relatively new to a lot of people, and unfortunately standardization isn't everywhere, but in general most people understand it as "I can go off road but I can't go on a mountain trail"
This self balancing stuff? Still VERY new to many many people.
I do agree that a recall was probably in their best interest, as lawsuits are inevitable. Yes, a safety feature SHOULD have made it very loud and clear that you are reaching the ABSOLUTE limit and to go faster means INJURY AT BEST. Make the physical limitation higher than the software limitations, and have the safety features have a failsafe so it doesn't just cut you off, thus faceplanting you anyway.
It could have been avoided with more education on the fundamentals of the devices and how they function. It could have been avoided with different/better safety features.
One thing is for sure, it's a lot easier for information to spread now, so if your product has a blind spot where "less education" could lead to deaths, you can be damn sure everyone will know about it, and it won't be just an urban legend you heard from your father's sisters' former roommate.
Err on the side of caution, go with the extra safety features. There's a reason chainsaw warnings say don't start it while holding the blade.