Living in a spread out state such as Florida, commuting to certain locations such as university, the grocery store or friend’s houses was not as easy as walking or taking the non existent public transportation. Searching online, electric longboards were $1000+ and I felt as though it would be a simple task to translate the knowledge I gained from building a quadcopter into creating my own budget electric longboard.

First I made a list of all the components I would need which consisted of longboard trucks that were easy to weld to, wheels that allowed for a 3D printed gear to be bolted to, a brushless motor that was capable of pushing my weight, an appropriate ESC for the motor size and finally a RC system to control the ESC.

Construction was fairly simple, I first started with 3D printing a gear for the wheel hub and a new housing for the bulky RC controller.

Next step was to have the motor mount cut and welded to the longboard trucks by a local metal fabrication shop

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Lastly, using a lunch box container, I housed the ESC, RC receiver and some extra LiPo batteries I had lying around. At this point the longboard is completely functional and I began to use it on a daily basis.

UPDATE:

I am now in the middle of replacing the LiPo batteries with the smaller and equally efficient 18650 cell batteries. These are the same batteries used in Tesla cars and other EV platforms. I have also started to design my own battery management system (BMS) in order to monitor battery health while I am using the longboard.

Prototype BMS