Onewheel Maker Recalls Every Board After Four Rider Deaths

Future Motion, the Santa Cruz company behind the Onewheel electric skateboard, has recalled all of its boards, a move that touches nearly every one of the single-wheeled devices seen on San Francisco streets. The voluntary recall was announced Friday, months after federal safety regulators first raised concerns.

Under the recall, owners of the original Onewheel and the Onewheel+ are told to stop using them altogether. Riders of every other model can keep riding once they install a firmware update. The update adds a "haptic buzz" that alerts riders when they are in an unsafe situation.

The notice on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission website describes the hazard plainly. The boards can stop balancing the rider if their limits are exceeded, "posing a crash hazard that can result in serious injury or death," it says.

According to the recall, four people died between 2019 and 2021 while riding the boards. All four suffered head trauma, and at least three were not wearing helmets. Dozens more riders were seriously hurt, with injuries that included traumatic brain injury, concussion, paralysis, fractures and ligament damage.

The company estimates it has sold 300,000 boards since its 2014 launch. The product began with a Kickstarter campaign led by founder Kyle Doerksen, a Stanford mechanical engineering graduate. Within weeks the campaign had raised six times its $100,000 goal, and the first boards shipped in November of that year. A racing league and communities of enthusiasts and modders have since grown up around the boards. A Onewheel spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

San Francisco has been a notable market for the product. A video on the company's YouTube page pits the Onewheel GT against the city's steepest streets, though a warning on it says the stunt is "extremely dangerous and may result in loss of control or damage to your Onewheel."

The recall has split the rider community. Owners of the Onewheel and Onewheel+ are offered a $100 discount on a new board, with new models starting at $1,050. "I'm basically being punished for being a long time customer," one rider wrote on Reddit.

Owners of newer boards have complained as well. Some say the firmware update left their devices "bricked," or effectively unusable, and fellow users have urged people who have modified their boards to hold off on updating. Others said the new haptic buzzing is a nuisance.

The safety commission first issued a notice about the boards last November, finding that riders were being thrown from them. Future Motion initially resisted a recall, calling it an "unwarranted and unprecedented action" and saying that "the people who actually ride Onewheels understand them best." Doerksen said at the time that riders know the boards are safe when used with commonsense practices and a helmet, and "no riskier than other motor and boardsports." On its website, the company now says the recall "is the culmination of months of work with the CPSC."