Electric skateboards have always been the go-to for young sports enthusiasts. They were considered as just a part of extreme sports and that’s what attracted those youngsters most. The latest electric skateboards are easily suitable as your choice of commuting methods to short distances. But one can’t help but ask – how short the distance should be. Or can it take you actually further than expected? Maybe your board can. Read onward to know about this.
Know About Your Board
Before buying a skateboard, try to gather as much as information possible about that particular board. If you go for a long range electric skateboard available on an online store, check its page to know about the brand name. Also, read the “Specifications” section to get the first slice of the information you need. If you are buying it directly from a shop, you should ask the seller to provide more info on that board. Try Googling a little bit. You’ll find either the manufacturer’s site or some online portals with information on the same board. If you manage to collect some crucial information about the specification of the board, you can easily determine its range.
The Specifications Section
The specifications for a board are printed behind its package. If you are buying the board from an e-commerce portal, you can find the same information very easily on the particular page for the product. But remember that, you don’t need all of that information. You need the following information:
● Energy used by the board(Provided in Wh)
● The capacity of the battery(Provided in mAh)
● Type of the battery(Generally Lithium)
● The voltage of the battery(Provided in V)
● Weight of the board
The first one from the list gives you a clear idea about the range of your skateboards. But manufacturers often do not follow specific norms for specifications. Some will present it in Wh, some others won’t even include this in the list.
The Easy Way – Wh
If you have the Wh value specified for your board, you can calculate a rough estimate in your mind to know the range of the board. For this purpose, you can use a general rule that is often used to measure the range of various rides with a Lithium-based battery pack.
Every 10Wh will give you enough juice to cover 1 kilometer.
So, for example, if a board has 100Wh mentioned in its specification, you should be able to cover 100/10 = 10 kilometers with that skateboard.
But keep in mind that this estimation is only for the preliminary idea. The actual range might be different. In the case of some lightweight boards, the range might be much larger. It also depends on the type of terrain too.
The problem begins – Specification without Wh
As I have already mentioned, every manufacturer has its own way of presenting information to you. Some provide the Wh value and the information about the battery, some others will only provide you with the information about the battery. As you don’t have Wh value, you can’t just compare this board with some other similar board from another manufacturer.
But the good news is, you can solve this with a little bit of mathematics. Suppose a board has a 29.4v battery pack attached to it and its capacity is 2500mah (Or, 2500/1000 = 2.5Ah). We can now multiply these two values to get the Wh value.
29.4v X 2.5Ah = 73.5Wh / 10Wh-km = 7.3 Kilometres.
The Weight Factor
There are a lot of factors that can affect the range of your board, but nothing can affect it as much as your weight. Generally, an efficiency factor is used to find out how much your weight affects it’s maximum range.
The value of this factor is 8 for any person with weight less than or equal to 60Kg and it increases by 2 for every 10Kg weight.
There is a general rule of thumbs for this too. I’ll assume that you either already know the Wh value or have calculated it. So, if your board’s energy consumption is 200Wh and your weight is 70Kg. The efficiency of your board will be approximately 8+2 =10. In that case, your board’s maximum range will be, 200Wh/10 = 20km.
That means, for people with weight around 70Kg, the longboard can almost negate the effect of the weight and can cover the theoretical range.
Conclusion
The range of your electric skateboard can depend on many other factors such as the terrain. But the above discussion should give you an idea about how to estimate the range initially. Your posture and way of riding also affects the range of your board. Just keep this in mind and you won’t find yourself worried about the range any longer.
