Don’t forget you will get charged customs as well. Or at the very least VAT.
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That’s a really good price, did you contact them directly through Alibaba?
@Linzio , there’s one major negative about the Hisun board that I forgot to mention: It doesn’t use a trigger for the throttle. Instead it has Up and Down buttons. I would be a little worried about what happens when you fall since the ankle killswitch may not always cut power quickly enough.
I would prefer a throttle so you can simply let go when you fall, but I can’t find any details about the Hisun controller so I don’t know if it would be easy to replace.
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For rental these boards need to be super safe. But before i wil try to start a rental business i want to try it for myself. So multiple buy is not yet an option. Hoping someone is building a newer version and selling the old one or something like that. But thanks for thinking!
Ultimately for a rental situation you want quality and repair options. That means you do not want to be tethered to China for support. One option may be the Takuma board as there are dealers in Europe. Its in the 6000euro range. You’ll get what you pay for, and if thats cheap, then support will most likely be lacking.
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Depending on the communication method, it may be relatively easy to swap the controller for something with a throttle trigger – it’s certainly worth investigating given the extremely affordable price point mentioned above. Worst case scenario: you have to swap the whole ESC and receiver, but that’s only a few hundred bucks per board.
Anyone running a rental business will need to be able to make minor modifications and repairs themselves, otherwise you’ll lose too much money to downtime and repair fees.
If you want 100% ready, maintenance-free boards I think you’re pretty much stuck with Lift and Flite for now (maybe Flying Rodeo if they have anything in stock), but those run $11,000+ each. Their batteries are also extremely expensive at $3,000+ each, and a rental company will need many spare batteries to keep board utilization high.
I didn’t know the takuma had been released. Is it only for sale in Europe or are there any US dealers?
It’s still on pre-order. I don’t know about the States, Lift will probably block it from coming there.
Have they blocked other companies from selling boards in the US?
I didn’t think it was possible to get a patent for what is essentially “We took [thing] and added a motor”.
Edit: Now I see the issue: The history of weight shift controlled electric hydrofoils - Regulations and Patents - FOIL.zone
Sounds like Lift licensed that bogus patent and will use it to scare away any potential competition. I hope someone takes them to court, the Evolo project is clearly prior art and there’s absolutely nothing novel about a foilboard that turns by shifting your weight (I remember seeing those being towed behind ski boats back in the 1990s).
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I have been thru this patent stuff multiple times due to my nature of job. Anyone can win this in any court in the US.
They have a patent fro their remote! imagine if someone else makes waterproof BLE based remote for any other device technically is violating their patent. This is just setting the bar higher and delaying market entrance for new players with small capital
Yes, got in touch with them through Ali and have been emailing dirtect for a good bit back and forth.
Its a very reasonable price for the board at $2380 per unit if you buy 10 else it is $2850 for 1 plus shipping but shipping is $1250 by Air for 1 unit. I’m in talks with a separate shipping company that has containers with free space being delivered to Ireland (part container load) and I maybe able to get shipping down to $550 but nothing confirmed - and it would take a long time to deliver (I’m not too bothered by that). Any advise on cheap china shipping methods for small volume is greatly welcomed!
It might be cheaper to fly there and collect it yourself. Get a discount if you leave the battery behind and then build one once home.
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Been doing import in UE for 12 years now, when you will do custom clearance chances are they will ask a lot of documents about your efoil, certifications and so on…
The battery and 220v charger part will be really complicated as many CE documents from Chinese companies are incomplete, wrong or counterfeit. I had to pay CE laboratory tests in France in order to import some devices and it was veeery costly (7000€ per device )
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Here is a second trail from France: PwrFoil. The battery is assembled/soldered/tested in France. So is the 5000€ efoil assembled from Chinese components. The concept is original: you mount a big waterproof box (efoil kit) with hydrofoil under an existing board. They are supposed to ship soon (late September / early October ?). Seems the remote is a Maytech.
@chris (forum member) is the boss so maybe he can tell us more here or open a new thread.
The FB page:
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