Guest Review: Unavoidable Contact With Asphalt, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chinese Crapola

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Have you ever ridden a skateboard? The feeling of the wind in your face descending a hill at twenty miles per hour has a way of leaving an impression. What if a skateboard could go thirty miles per hour... or more? What if a skateboard had brakes to allow controlled descent of a steep hill? Could an ingenious machinist attach a lawnmower engine at the back of a skateboard to power it when a daunting hill approached? Such questions preoccupied my faculties in my youth.

Not entirely, of course. Normal teenagers of the millennial era dreamed of cars, your author did as much as anyone - but my brother’s last-minute need for a commuter car during adulthood snatched my own ride from me, and stuck me on a longboard.

The Vette may or may not get them wet, but the longboard only wets its rider

It had been a while, of course. Young Mr. Konger was sliding face-first around leafy campuses on four tiny wheels almost before the nation we inhabit started down the ladder of civilizational complexity on greased skids. But for all that has been lost, some things have been gained. Among those gains are electric toys. Call them e-bikes, e-skateboards or e-scooters - call them e-trash as our wonderful host here is wont - but cheap thrill-enjoyers ought not overlook what electric motors in lightweight packages might be capable of.

Year ago your humble author was planning for a family. Practical considerations dictated that I downsize the fleet. While it was not yet time to sell the motorcycles, a personal sort of Morgenthau Plan was the first order of business, to ensure those vehicles remained in the driveway rather than in the service bay. For quick trips to the post office and cheap thrills without All The Gear, therefore, a purchase had to be made--in this case the purchase of a WowGo AT2.

It doesn’t look like much, but then again nothing electric ever does

Like a good motorcycle or a zoomer's rental e-scooter, a powerful e-skateboard feels much like a magic carpet. With 5-inch, pneumatic "all terrain" tires mounted, the well-maintained streets of my humble sarariman burg vanish at the slightest push of the thumb-throttle. The board comes with 4 speed modes, activated by tapping the power button once the board is turned on. Each progressive "speed mode" - 1,2,3 and T- allows the rider a higher maximum speed and quicker throttle response. One presumes T for Turbo, rather than T for Testosterone, but at max throttle, it feels like new chest hair might be growing.

With a Vmax of only 26 mph (with the right wheels and belts), such a contraption *shouldn't* take long to accelerate to top speed---but the two or three seconds it takes is sure to thrill. It remains no less thrilling even in the shadow of thousands of miles behind the handlebars of a motorbike. If one can imagine the difference between skydiving and flying a Cessna, perhaps it makes sense that 20 miles per hour on the board feels like ninety on a sportbike. On a motorcyle, a man worries about getting rear-ended when dogging along at 20 miles per hour. On an e-skateboard, a wise man worries constantly. Potholes pose risks that would not trouble a road cyclist's serene striver consciousness. A foolhardy squirrel could cause death.

It gets worse. Crazy contraptions and car-guy toys are never without a flaw. In this case, it's the fundamental mechanics of the board. For both suspension and turning, like all skateboards and most e-skateboards, the WowGo AT2 rides on trucks--stick-axles with hinges over an elastomer to allow turning and very modest suspension.

A conventional double-kingpin skate truck.

Wowgo chose double-kingpin trucks for the AT2, essentially regular skateboard trucks with two elastomers mounted in series. The double-kingpin trucks allow a tighter turning radius and accommodate a larger wheel-tire apparatus, but tightening the turning radius of a skateboard always comes at the cost of high-speed stability. For high speed, the bolts over the elastomers can be tightened, and wider, smaller-diameter wheels that can be swapped on, lowering the center of gravity. But no board that uses elastomeric skate trucks will ever be totally free of the potential for encountering risky, unintended oscillation known to skateboarders as speed wobbles and motorcyclists as the dreaded "tank slapper."

No review of any motor vehicle is ever complete without a technically-erroneous use of headshake-inducing cliche "snap oversteer," and this review is no exception. Take it from experience: a quick relaxation of the AT2's thumb-throttle at speed or during acceleration *will* provoke load transfer, and anything from a brief, unsettling shake to a truly butt-clenching rocking motion will follow. Imagine cruising serenely four inches above the asphalt, only to have the platform you’re standing on violently whipsaw like a dog shaking off water. Even in a straight line on flat road, sudden removal of throttle application will cause a very brief speed-wobble as load is transferred. If the wheels are turned while the throttle is released, the resulting snap oversteer is likely to make the rider look like Steve Urkel rather than Stephan Papadakis. If you are not in the process of slowing or coming to a halt, simply stay on the throttle.

In 2021, the WowGo AT2 was an easy choice in a competitive market. It's cheap, it's fast, it ships quickly, the reviews are good, and to the extent such can be discerned, it appears that warranty service is acceptable. In 2021, it was the best value for money in the game. These days, other manufacturers are offering e-skateboards of similar duty, with greater performance, at a similar price. Today, from brands with little or no marketing, you can purchase a four-motor board with a chopped-strand "forged" carbon deck for a mere $1600. It gobsmacks one to think how they can sell so much performance for so little—which raises a question. In the heyday of the automobile some years or decades past, was it apparent to us how good we had it with cars?

As of this writing, there are very few truly American entrants left in the e-skateboard field, and every one of them is a premium offering. Exkate is long gone. E-skateboard popularizers Boosted Boards ate the bullet of bankruptcy for reasons that will one day be told, perhaps here if your author can manage it. New York City-based Kaly.NYC shut down a year or so ago. There appear to be only two truly American options left. The first is Hoyt Street, an outfit founded by former Nike designers. They make a large, powerful board at an eye-watering price. A more realistic option is the Metroboard: a Washington State-based outfit offering a super-premium e-skateboard with carbon deck, CNC-machined trucks, and lights. In the West more broadly, Australia-based Evolve makes excellent e-skateboards. Trampa, based out of the UK, makes massive, expensive off-road boards. But when you're not getting your e-crap from China, the price soon rises into the stratosphere, or for the contemporaries of this board, the sportbikeosphere.

Though the automotive future looks like beige, underperforming electro-crap made below cost in China, the world of e-skateboards is looking bright. The best news of all is that others in this market niche have made efforts to solve the speed wobbles by applying the basic principles of modern automotive suspension design.

Made in Portugal, the Hunter Board features independent, double-wishbone suspension at all four corners.

Firstly, the key improvement for a truly stable ride would be to toss the trucks and select a fully independent, double-wishbone suspension. Hunter Boards, manufactured in Portugal, has done it. (Others in the extreme-off-road space (such as Trampa and now-defunct Kaly NYC) have also done it --- but who can convince themself to spend $4000 on a children's toy? $4000 is getting close to beat-up Yamaha FZ1 money. No sane man would recommend a skateboard before an FZ1.)

The second step - that I have not seen any manufacturer yet take, and can't imagine any manufacturer ever taking - would be to make the dampers pushrod-activated and parallel to the board surface, similar to the arrangement common in contemporary formula cars. Perhaps doing so would be a pointless cost-increasing affectation, but it's also possible that lowering the center of mass could yield true user-friendliness. (If anyone reading this wishes to engage in some recreational CAD work, please get in touch.)

At the time of publishing, the WowGo AT2 is out of stock, seemingly replaced by the AT2 Plus. It’s no longer the top dog, though. If you happen to be so blessed as to be shopping for one of these things, the best (and seemingly least corrupt) review website appears to be e-skateboard HQ. The options in the $1,XXX price range are excellent. Consider the Acedeck Ares X1, The Meepo Vader Hurricane Carbon, the Exway Atlas. If you want to buy from a company based in the West, something from Evolve is probably your best bet. No article without a lengthy table could capture all the options.

The use cases here should be self-explanatory. Commuters who can use bike trails are the buyer-in-the-bullseye here. Dads whose kids love adventure should click the PayPal button. You yourself may get to experience your child screaming with delight and BEGGING for another ride across the soccer field. When a bicycle or e-bike or e-scooter isn't the thing, when a motorcycle is too much of a pain to get geared up for, when the distance is moderate and highways aren't featured, and above all when bike lanes or bike paths are plentiful---buy this contraption. It may be Chinese, it may be dangerous, it may be totally impractical for anything serious, and it will probably need new batteries after a few years. But if you live in the right zip code and commute to another right zip code, it's a thrill that probably won't get you killed--and as such, comes highly recommended.