Insights: InMotion V10
By Bob Yan, COO InMotion
The InMotion V10 was launched on April 10th, and it has attracted the attention of enthusiasts and beginners alike even before the official announcement. It’s basically an upgrade based on the InMotion V8 (Solowheel Glide 3 in US) form factor, has much more range, power, and well... almost everything. If you are a fan of the InMotion V8, then you definitely don’t want to miss out on the InMotion V10.
You probably know nearly everything out there about InMotion V10, but there are 3 insights you must not have heard of, so today I’d like to share them with you.
1. The InMotion V10 didn’t start out as V10.
After InMotion and Solowheel decided to collaborate, we formed up a new joint venture and hired a brand-new operating team, and they originally convinced the board members to brand our next electric unicycle as a Solowheel model and officially name it “Solowheel Glide 4” globally.
However, after gaining confidence in the community’s recognition of the InMotion brand as well as the Solowheel team not being able to operate optimally in 2017, we began to reconsider all the strategies they made and decided to release the wheel under the InMotion brand. The first idea we tossed around was "InMotion V8S" at the beginning, but we realized after some development decisions that the new model would be more than just an incremental upgrade. V9 was skipped as an option altogether, and we also considered VX. As you know, we ultimately we decided on “InMotion V10”. Perhaps we can release a model in the future and that we can confidently name “InMotion VX”.
2. The InMotion V10 started off as an off-road model.
The InMotion V10 project started in June 2017. Since power, mileage, speed are the most important factors for experienced riders, these were sure things we wanted to enhance for the V10, but we were not sure what style we want, and what tire we should use. Should it be more targeted for urban commute or more for off-roading? The 18 inch tire and off road style won in our team at the beginning and we designed something like below, but after we asked about 200 customers and found for that 59% of them, commute was their most often used scenario, and after several debates we pivoted to the urban style, just like the InMotion V8. We actually spent some time designing the initial concepts for an off-road model, as you can see below. Maybe it’ll become someone's favorite in the future.
3. A deeper look at the software inside V10
We’ve spent lots of time refining the firmware of the InMotion V10, and most of them are not the most obvious, for example:
Bluetooth Connectivity: The bluetooth connection speed has increased by 54% compared with the previous models.
Smooth Ride: There used to be tiny vibrations users could feel when riding at very slow speeds or while rapidly braking, but we were able to reduce this by 85% for InMotion V10 because of our new self-balancing algorithm controlling the motor.
Internal Communication Speed: Internal communication speed has increased by 64% due to the increased processing power of V10’s dual core, so it’s now possible to do some levels of redundant work. For example, if one core chip is shut down unexpectedly, the other one will be able to restart it immediately. Because this can happen so quickly, it can make sure the core is running again before the motor loses power.
Headlight Driver Efficiency: The InMotion V10 has a much brighter headlight as you already know, but it’s also more efficient! The cooling efficiency of the headlight has been increased from 80% to 92%, which means it uses less energy.
Dual Speaker & Auto Mute: The InMotion V10 has dual speakers, each of which has power rated at 6W. Additionally, there is a specific filter board to mute interference noise that would normally be ever-present when music isn't playing during a bluetooth connection.
Slope Locked Cut-Off Protection: You may have seen other high-powered electric unicycles suddenly cut off without warning when pressed into a harsh or unmovable object or steep slope, even at very slow speeds. With the InMotion V10, we've built in a protection system that will first tilt back giving the user a chance to back off of a stressful position before the system cuts power to the motor.