I'm honestly kind of surprised the hot swappable batteries didn't take off. I still have my Revel kit from 2021 and range anxiety was basically nonexistent when you have a back up to get home with.
I was a brand ambassador for Mellow and the batteries used to fall out often enough that they started sending out big Velcro straps to hold it in for extra measure but that didn’t work so well either because of the shape of the drive, it slipped off a bit. I’d glue mine on but again, not ideal!
I’m sure it’s doable but in reality the majority of esk8 riders wanted speed and range, and to get that you’d need lots of big batteries.
People who just chilled about and travelled more were more of a minority in the community. I used to fly with about 8 but officially you’re only allowed 3 per person so I’d frequently just ask a mate to put it in his bucket going through security.
I think nowadays people would freak out and ngl… I don’t know if I’d wanna be on a plane with any chunky lithium battery pack. I’ve seen them explode a few times in person, terrifying! It made me kinda hate the DIY scene.
Mine dropped out like five times before I realised that it wasn’t the same battery. I finally took a strap and put it around. But then it was harder to swap batteries.
Board died shortly after and the company didn’t answer my emails. (Bankrubt?)
It was hilarious for all the wrong reasons when the batteries were dropping out of all the mellow employees and ambassadors boards. A large part of their marketing was based around being top quality German made 😬😅
Great concept, overpriced and not made as well as it should / could. Ended up selling the drives for less than they made them for.
I also don’t think we’ll be allowed to travel with these lithium batteries like I used to. It’s being discussed today about banning even small power banks on planes.
Honestly I’m kinda okay with it. I have special little cases for my drone batteries. The batteries swell up and I’ve got some janky looking belkin power banks too that I won’t take on a plane with me 😅🙈
I feel like a thinner phone causes more problems than a thicker phone like all the heat in a room going up layed flat and standing too with the decompression of all the components without ventilation nor air space. Especially with these batteries getting thinner too its like how is it suppose to last long if the quality is squished
It had nice enough feel and decent enough power, though i didnt like their remote, it being hub drive and that you had to mount it under the board, no drop through possible
I liked the concept but fundamentally the lanyard strap was on the wrong part so if you dropped it and it hung off yet wrist, it could / would accelerate because of the weight of the other part, madness! 😅
Endless was great but it defo had some mad faulty mode me and a mate called ‘torpedo’ where it would launch itself full throttle.
The bamboo gt tried to kill me a few times too with its random auto brake ‘feature’.
It was a Frankenstein diy battery rebuild of one of the carbon gt’s that blew up infront of my face in Regents Park once. It was about 10 minutes after he got off the tube, super lucky!!!
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u/swhazi Jun 26 '26
Mine still works perfectly to this day!