Electric Skateboards as a Solution to the Last Mile of Personal Transportation

Personal electric vehicles, or PEVs, help individuals navigate short to mid distance commutes in environments that lack effective public transportation solutions. This is known as the “Last Mile” problem. A particular solution, electric skateboards, are highly energy efficient due to their size but lack auxiliary features for safety and user-convenience connected to the same battery supply. Plus, almost all conventional electric boards come with proprietary software and hardware designs, meaning that modifying or improving upon their logic is extremely difficult if not impossible. Therefore, our group aims to prototype an improved, open-source electric skateboard design to determine the feasibility of our ideas.