I have been researching electric skateboards for a few months and I am now starting to collect my parts. I am stuck on what motor and battery combination that I want to go with. I have two concerns that are swaying my decisions.
Range: My daily commute is 3.8 miles total. But once or twice a week I need to go to other offices So my total range capabilities needs to be at least 9.5 miles on a single charge. I know that sort of range isn’t too hard to accomplish. I live in NYC so it is relatively flat.
Load: I am assuming most Esk8 calculators that estimate speeds and range are accounting for a 150-175lbs person. I am a big guy, 6’3", 255lbs and I usually have my bag loaded with 20-40lbs. I am worried how the extra weight will affect my range and speed.
So with those two things in mind, does anyone has a good battery and motor recommendation? I don’t really have a budget in mind but I don’t want to waste money on something completely overkill. Top speed is secondary to range and braking capabilities as I am sure carrying a fully loaded backpack isn’t easy at 25+mph.
These are parts I already have:
Loaded Vanguard Flex 1 Deck
MBS 100mm All Terrain Wheels
Caliber II Trucks 50° 184mm (I might swap these out for some wider trucks if needed)
Lastly, does anyone have a good recommendation for a 2.4ghz remote with a dead man switch? I don’t like the idea of not having a dead man switch on a remote but there aren’t many on the market. If there are good DIY remotes, I am open to building one too.
No expert by any means. I’m new here, but from what I understand you’ll want prob want dual low kv motors with a 12s4-6p. The dual low kv(140ish) will give you plenty of torque to carry your weight, and the power of the 12s will help with the speed. Depending on what batteries you choose will determine how many cells parallel you need for your range goals. Lower mah will need more cells in parallel then higher mah cells.
If you want torque then you’re gonna want needy motors that will take a lot of amps and a high gear ratio. What’s your budget? Group buy for the biggest motors in eskating just opened, the MayTech 6880
If you want hella torque then maybe some lipo batteries is the move, a high gear ratio and heavy load with those wheels will be 15-20Wh/mi so you’re gonna want a 200Wh pack to be safe, if you do a 12s2p of high discharge 18650 cells you’ll be good, maybe VTC5s? It would be >200Wh and 2.6kW
Be aware that the vanguard is a very flexy deck even flex 1. This can really complicate things as battery packs generally aren’t that flexible. I’ll be building up a more mellow board on a cantellated tesseract which has the advantage of being quite stiff as well as having a kick tail which even on an eskate can be quite useful. You’ll almost certainly want to go with two motors. The acceleration might be overkill, but the difference in braking power from one motor to two is really significant. Weight wise, you’re fine especially in NYC which is mostly flat. I was getting about 10 mile range at modest speed on flat with a dual drive 10s2p and weigh around 210.
i would recomend a 10s6p or 12s5p pack with dual 6374 on torqueboards 218m trucks, this will give you ALOT of power for a street board. 190kv is fine and the pulley ratio can be about 1:2.5 with 90mm wheels. you wont struggle at all with torque on this setup. I would be careful using such a flexible board. i think its weight limit is 250 total, and one small bump and you will bottom out your enclosure
with the right gearing, anything is possible. personally i’d go with either dual 6355 or 6374. the torqueboards 6355 fit a normal caliber truck dual with 1mm clearance.
get somewhere between 140 and 190KV motors and gear to your desired topspeed, that’s how you get the most torque out of your setup.
as you have lower KV motors you can safely go 12S on your battery. i’d also recommend at least 3p because you’re going to pull a lot of amps constantly accelerating in the city.