Typically, electric skateboards drive one or more wheels with brushless motors, while keeping everything mounted on otherwise fairly-standard trucks to maintain maneuverability. However, [swedishFeetballs] decided to go a different route, building a 3-wheeled design using some interesting parts.
The build relies on a large combined hub motor and wheel, similar to those you would find on a hoverboard or some electric scooters; this one is a Xiaomi part sourced from eBay. It’s controlled via an off-the-shelf electric skateboard speed controller that comes complete with its own remote.
The hardware is all bolted up to a custom skateboard deck built from scratch to accept the large single rear wheel. Up front, a regular skateboard truck is used. Batteries are mounted under the deck. Reportedly, the board has a top speed of 15 mph, which unsurprisingly matches that of the Xiaomi M365 the hub motor is sourced from.
It’s a neat way to build an electric skateboard, and to be honest we couldn’t be more curious as to how it rides. Unfortunately, only a few seconds of footage is available, but we’ve embedded it below for your watching pleasure!
Meanwhile, you might also be curious as to the benefits of a half-track skateboard. Video after the break.
These are referred to in the scene as 3sk8, like Esk8 but with the E flipped to a 3. One thing I admire about them in general is the speed wobble problem of skateboards comes from rear truck unintended movement, so elimination of movement with the single rear wheel is ideal for high speed. Also suspension parts easily taken over from the scooter as well.
“3sk8” : 48000 results
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aaand I jinxed it
I’d make it front wheel drive and put that big wheel in front so it goes over things easier
Here’s a much longer video of a board in the same style: it looks like it rides really well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHyjDBSb0u8
This looks quite amazing! Should actually feel more comfortable on rougher asphalt simply because only the front two wheels always fall into the cracks. I wonder, though, how does the rear wheel feel when it comes to longitudinal cracks in the road? Will it hunt for the cracks? How stable does this feel overall?
Can confirm, 3 wheeled skateboards are great. The turning radius is a lot longer than a dual-truck but it is a lot simpler of a design. Here’s my fold-able one from 2017:
https://transistor-man.com/mountainslider.html
https://vimeo.com/233775952