Electric skateboard firm rolling along
Voluntary recall was small bump in the road for Boosted Boards
Seven months ago, electric skateboard company Boosted Boards faced a major problem — two customers reported smoke emanating from the battery compartment of its newest model.
The news could have been disastrous for the 60-employee Mountain View company, especially since battery fires in products like self-balancing hover boards and Samsung phones were generating big headlines at the time.
But CEO Sanjay Dastoor decided to be candid with customers, even warning them to stop riding.
“We said look, we don’t know what’s happened, but until we figure that out, please don’t ride,” said Dastoor, who has visited customers himself to help fix problems. “We’ve built our brand a lot on taking care of our customers.”
The company investigated the problem, replaced the battery units on about 3,200 boards and has weathered that bump in the road, Dastoor said in an interview this week.
Founded in 2011, Boosted Boards makes skateboards with electric motors, with a handheld Bluetooth controller that lets riders accelerate and brake. The boards can go as fast as 22 mph, with a range of up to 7 miles on one charge.
On the surface, the bamboo boards look like regular skateboards, but they’re more expensive. Models cost $1,300 to $1,600, depending on the power and range.
Boosted sells boards on Amazon.com and in 150 retail stores in the United States and Canada. The privately held company, which is now shipping boards to Europe and Austraila, doesn’t disclose how many it’s
sold since 2014.
“Ever since my car got broken into I’ve been parking at my old place in Potrero and getting around S.F. on my Boosted board,” @wikichen tweeted in December. “It’s the best.”
The company markets the boards as “the lastmile vehicle,” which commuters would use to connect short distances between other modes of transportation, such as from a BART station to work. Dastoor and cofounder John Ulmen, the chief technology officer, say the boards offer a more portable alternative to bicycles and cars.
On Boosted’s Reddit board, owners post videos of themselves commuting to work or riding in a park. One posted a photo of the board in a grocery cart, saying it is “the only way to grocery shop.”
“We don’t actually look at ourselves as an electric skateboard company, even though our core product is an electric skateboard,” said Ulmen. “We look at ourselves as a short-distance electric vehicle company.”
Ulmen created the concept as a graduate robotics student at Stanford, using a foot-powered skateboard between classes and jobs.
“What I loved about that was I could just pick the thing up and go,” he said. “I didn’t have to worry about finding a place to park if I had a car. I didn’t have to worry about locking a bike. When I got where I needed to go, I’d just pick it up and walk inside.”
But he needed a more efficient, less sweaty way to get around, so Ulmen built a 12-pound motorized skateboard, which became the prototype for Boosted Boards.
In late 2016, the company began selling its second-generation board. But on Jan. 12, it voluntarily agreed to a Consumer Product Safety Commission recall after two customers in New York reported overheating and smoke from the lithium-ion battery pack.
The action came after the federal commission recalled more than 500,000 self-balancing scooters, also called hover boards, made by other companies, because of overheating batteries that could catch fire and explode. In May, the commission warned people to stop using the LayZ Board brand hover board, which was involved in a deadly fire that killed two young girls in Harrisburg, Pa.
Although overheating did not cause fires in the Boosted products, one owner immediately threw the board in a dumpster as a precaution, Dastoor said. The company examined the other board and found the problem was caused not by the battery, but by water that got into the compartment and shortcircuited the electronics of the battery management system, he said.
Boosted redesigned the system and sent new battery packs to the affected owners. It is no longer marketing the boards as water-resistant.
Although Dastoor said most of Boosted’s fans remained loyal and sympathetic to the company, one Reddit member posted that he canceled his order anyway. “Now we have this battery fiasco, I want my money back,” Ivan858 wrote.
Dastoor wouldn’t say how much the recall cost the company, but said things are now back on track. Boosted has raised an undisclosed amount from investors including former Facebook executive Dave Morin’s Slow Ventures.
In 2015, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that revised an older state ban on motorized boards. The bill was authored by former Assembly Republican Leader Kristin Olsen of Modesto, which is home to Boosted Boards competitor Intuitive Motion, which makes a product called the ZBoard.
But Daniel Dahlberg, 25, ran into problems with the law last week when he took his board on the road for the first time in Vancouver, British Columbia. He chose the board over a competitor from Evolve Skateboards of Carlsbad (San Diego County), partly because of what he called Boosted Board’s excellent reputation.
“I was heading down a residential road and came to a stop sign, and that’s when the officer asked me to pull over, which is pretty funny to hear when you’re on a skateboard,” Dahlberg said.
The officer handed Dahlberg a $598 ticket for operating the skateboard without insurance, which is not available in Vancouver. Dahlberg plans to contest the ticket and work to change his city’s laws, but returned the board because “I don’t feel safe riding it anymore with the possibility of getting a ticket.”
Dastoor recommends that riders check local laws governing the motorized boards. “Unfortunately, laws and regulations aren’t being updated as fast as the electric vehicle industry is changing,” he said. “Many places are still operating with dated and ambiguous laws. We’re currently working to understand how they’re being enforced, and to influence changes to these laws.”