30 Mar Reinventing the Wheel

Wheels are probably the most important component of every longboard especially on ones tuned for
speed.

The most important parameters are diameter, contact patch, durometer, lip shape and on electric in-
wheel longboards also urethane depth. Too little and the ride will be bumpy and totally unpleasant. So
we decided to go for 85 mm diameter, 70 mm contact patch 80 Shore A durometer and 17,5 mm urethane
depth. The wheels are built on an aluminium core that allows easy mounting on the electric in-wheel
motor. Our wheels are optimized for high speed, they are grippy and predictable and of course they
will not let you down even when sliding sharp corners.

But it was not so at the beginning – back then we used aluminium core with four 2.5 mm deep grooves to
create a mechanical lock between the core and urethane. It worked, but not for speeds of over 90 km/h.
At those speeds the wheels are rotating so fast that centrifugal force could tear the urethane off the core (ghosting)
then the urethane spreads to the point that it could separate from the core. This is of course extremely
dangerous and because our board is capable of even higher speeds we found a solution to make
the wheels safe for the speeds that were never achieved on any existing e-board.

We totally redesigned the core so the urethane bonds to the core from inside and outside so there was no chance
of separation from the core any more. All our prototype wheels are made that way now and since total
core redesign we haven’t had any problems with the wheels whatsoever! But the redesigned core is quite
expensive so it wasn’t convenient for mass production. Here’s where our partner from the rollercoaster
business comes in. They made special wheels for us on totally basic aluminium cores even without grooves. And
because they did the job perfectly our production wheels are totally at any speed.