yeah Hummies current in progress hubs look better than any others I’ve seen, first I have been interested to learn more about… I’m still on the fence though 
First off, I’m not very experienced with belt and pulley systems. But my understandingBelt and pulleys generally run around 190 kv with a 2.5:1 gear reduction. If you want speed, you do a 2:1 gear reduction. You know from the hub motor world that a 190 kv motor is too high for a hub motor/direct drive motor. But reduce that by a 2:1, and you’d expect the same results as a 85 kv motor, right? Well, it’s not really that simple. I don’t understand it all myself when it comes to belt and pulley systems. But I have personally seen efficiency I can’t comprehend with hubs so far. The stator of my original enertion motor is a fraction of the size of these small hub motors, yet far more efficient with a 2:1 I’m excited to do the first real measured range tests tomorrow with the new hubs. I believe I will see much better range due to far less heat loses. Might be able to get close to a belt drive efficiency. We’ll see…
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The onces we are putting together right now are basically the old design, but longer and bigger outer bearing. The new ones are completely off the wall insane. But I think he’s blended the best of the bike world mechanics into a hub motor. If all goes well, it will result in a motor that doesn’t need loctite or anything to hold it together. This means easier to take apart, which is a huge plus for us, and end users who want to replace the big inner bearing. The design has also been optimized for machining. We worked with machinists to find changes that make it easier to machine. Those 14 grooves for the wheel, for example, are expensive cuts because they are round. Requires a higher axis cnc machine. We turned them to square, and the cost dropped significantly. This allows us to offer really good prices for what they are. We shall see in a few weeks when they send the first 2 samples. If all goes well, we will run with this design for sometime. I keep telling hummie, no more changes, and the next day, it’s a whole new motor design, haha.
let him go bro… such is the beast: innovation
look forward to seeing what you guys bring 
I would have agreed fully umtil recently. Now I belive other factors may have been contributing to the inefficiency we’ve seen from hubs thus far. The rolling resistance of hub thane has been terrible on every hub iteration Ive seen to date when compared to the high quality name brand skate wheels. So much so that its immediately noticable when kicking the boards. What convinced this was a huge factor was my range test with my Carvon V3’s on 90mm flywheels. I got over 15 miles on 215whrs. That’s better than a boosted board in eco mode and I weigh 285lbs.
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BOOM 
the big fella brings the rain
maybe someone could try taking a high quality skate wheel and build it around a hub, not just chop half of it out?
14Wh per mile for 285lb of cargo is really good; were you driving “fun” or “eco” ?
Edit: said “range test” nevermind
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Im not sure how much of the losses are coming from properties of the urathane itself vs the airgap that develops between the motor and the wheel vs increased resistance due to higher hub motor temp, but i think they are all big players in the losses we see in hubs. I think with good wheels and managable temps we should see hub efficiency surpass belt drives in some situations at least. Especially long rides with few stops at moderate to high speeds.
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Yeah eco’ish. Average spees at the end of the test was about 13 if I recall correctly.
Oh ok. I can pull off 15Wh/mi minimum (more like 18) riding like that but I’m 215 lbs, so yours is significantly better
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I don’t know either… but… if more thane is better why do some popular wheels have a core? it means less thane! one possible answer: wheels are suspension to a large degree on a skateboard, does the core provide a different type of attenuation/dampening that is required??? alloy cores have been tried but don’t seem superior or popular?
yeah, although I’m not sure a hub, even 4wd will be the fastest up Pikes
When I said proerties of the thane i didn’t have thane thickness in mind as much as I did properties like rebound, but thane thickness also factors in per @ChrisChaput explanation. Im just saying hub thane doesn’t roll well and feels like lots of efficiency is being lost to friction from rolling resistance.
Although Im confident that my 4wd hub boards have more than enough torque to climb pikes peak at 30mph, I wouldnt even try it. The pikes peak challenge is not a battle of efficiency or even power as I see it, its purely a battle of heat management. Any of the hubs I have would heat up within the first few miles of the climb with me on them without a doubt, even with 4wd. If I race Pikes peak it will be on the 4wd trampa with 80mm motors Ive been working on for months 
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Ive never claimed that hubs have supieror heat management, they have obvious disadvantages in that area. However under low-med load cruising situations( at motor rpms within the efficincy range for its KV), where heat isnt much of a concern, the hubs should be more efficient since the motors do not have the frictional losses from the belts or from the higher motor rpm needed for a given wheel speed. I’ll do some more logs with my V3’s with whr comsumption overlaid on the video see if I can confirm this :).
Maybe @Hummie and @evoheyax longer motors will have what it takes though. Can we see expect to see those motors at the socal performance day next month at least if not Pikes peak?
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For some more stats on belt drive efficiency I get 12-13 wh/mile at high speed and can get as low as 8 wh/mile if I stay under 20 mph - this is all on flat terrain at 220-240lb (depends on what I’m carrying). This is on the freeride which uses a tensioner and the belts are run really loose.
Just went on an R2 meet-up. Here’s a shot so you can see motor size difference - even with my weight thermals have not become an issue. The low-end torque of the R2 was impressive, never felt that on a hub.
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I think there are factors impacting the range of hubs that aren’t existent in but what doesn’t make sense to me is my first board. Enertion drive kit with a r-spec 2 motor. Top speed 20 mph, but riding at 20 mph most of the time, on a 201 Wh battery, I could get 7 miles of range on my route. With hummie hubs, I went down to 5 miles with a 403 Wh battery. I never really do range tests in the sense that I find the flattest ground, and ride slow for as long as possible. It means noting to me, cause I never ride slow, ever. I’m sure if I have, I’d see those numbers go way up. For example, I already found pull 4x the amps going up the 10% grade hills. This should translate into 25% of the expected battery range is what you get, which, is about what I’ve always gotten. The question is though, how efficient can hubs get? I think very efficient. But it depends on the kv. 140 kv motor is more what I think we would like (carvon 2.5’s for example). But you sacrifice low speed torque and efficiency.
I don’t understand the gearing benefits fully, but I have seen a huge difference. Maybe these new hubs will change everything for me, we will see. Now that we have a core, we can make super nice wheels with great rebound. I road on a garbage road yesterday at around 25 mph, and hardly felt the vibrations.
What I do know is the stator in the raptor 2 is half of the size of hummies original motors. But yet, I got way better range and they stayed so much cooler.
Maybe @chaka could chime in on the details of why belt drives are more efficient than hubs at higher speeds (40-50 mph). Belt drives are his specialty, while hubs are my specialty. I agree that we can bring efficiency up though to belt drives for lower speeds. I believe these new motors will do just that.
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I will be bringing these motors everywhere I can. What I’m really excited about is the triple wide motors. We still want to bring those guys back. Hummie did simulations yesterday, and found the 12mm custom axle is 20 times stronger than a 8mm axle 
No motor motors snapping trucks like what happened before with the triple wide motors.
You’ll see more video in the near future also. Planning on tamming mt. tamalpais as it is now. Or at least doing as much as the battery will allow me to do, lol. Want to give these motors a full range of tests. I chose a lower than desirable kv this time to get that extra bit of torque and efficiency.
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Reduction will always produce more torque than a direct drive. Anyone with a slight understanding of mechanics can see this. If someone came on these forums with a 1:1 pulley drive everyone would be pointing out their error but none seem to care when a person comes to the plate with a hub drive. I’m guessing there is too much smoke in the air.
One thing I know is nothing will beat out a rear mounted reduction drive. The size of the motors you can fit behind the trucks will dwarf anything you can fit inside a tube of polyurethane.
Those little cans we have been running on the FreeRide are nice little motors in a dual configuration but they are the absolute smallest I would ever go. We have since switched to a larger motor on the FreeRide choosing more power over weight savings.
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Thanks for chiming in!
I honestly hope you get a chance to try the raptor 2 motors the carvon 3 motors and hummies new motors. You will notice a world of difference over the small hubs that everyone else sells today and that you’ve probably tried in the past. Lower heat, lower waste, and more thane, to the point that I think it’s worth the tradeoffs for simplicity.
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I’m glad to see the progression with hubs in regards to cored urethane and bigger motors. It was inevitable. My silence on the subject doesn’t mean that I’m not watching, reading and taking note of everything that surfaces. But as archaic as y’all seem to think reduction systems are, they are superior. Yes they look like garden equipment, but they enable adjustable torque, acceleration and top speed without compromising consumption and heat production. Proof lies in the fact that we can run any size urethane and then swap out to pneumatics and run trails, grass and gravel without overheating our motors. (uphill)
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I think it’s worth the tradeoffs for simplicity.
I think novelty is the word you are looking for. Novelty is good for business but not performance. If I seem abtuse it is only because there is a lot of misinformation going around regarding hub motors in reference to reduction drives.
For me hubs do not solve any problems. The problems we faced early on in Eskate with belt slipping and poor fitting motor mounts has been solved with precision matched mounts and trucks… idlers. I don’t want to derail this thread so this all I will say on the matter.
I will say, you have pretty much answered your own question through observation. You need to double the power potential of your hubs if you want to match a 2:1 reduction drive. Eventually you will run out of space and have to accept the compromise that hub motors cannot escape unless you engineer some gear reduction into your hub. Lowering KV is fine if you have a motor large enough to take the extra turns on the stator. lowering the kv too far on a small diameter motor creates inefficiency. This is the main problem hub motors face. You don’t have the space to fit a motor large enough to be wound to a low enough KV to produce good torque without generating a lot of heat.
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Wow. I’m surprised to hear such harsh words from such an intelligent person, when you haven’t even tried the best of hubs on the market today. These hubs have changed the game. Things are not the same anymore.
It hurts to have the person you respect and admire so much rip apart the research and development that I and many have done for the past two years. These small hub motors are novelty. But even pushing these new larger hubs hard now, I can not make then overheat the same way. There’s always more to learn and more innovation to be done. If your try a pair of any of these three motors, you’ll see that we have the space to fit a stable motor into the wheel, that won’t overheat, even when pushed a bit.
I’m willing to concede and say things that aren’t in best financial interest, such as conceding that belt drives have an advantage that hubs never will be able to fully utilize. But to go as far as to say they are “novelty” is insulting and it’s clear your trying to protect your business. It’s sad, because if you tried my board, as is now, with 4wd hubs, you’d be pretty happy with the torque and the max temps the motors get to.
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