How Future Motion Created Onewheel with SOLIDWORKS

In 2006, the Nintendo® Wii introduced a technology that could respond directly to movement using sensors. Similar sensors eventually became standard in other consumer products, including smartphones.

Kyle Doerksen, founder and CEO of Future Motion, worked on some of the first motion-controlled toys and consumer products early in his career. Doerksen grew up snowboarding in Western Canada, where riding powder became his ultimate experience. Drawing on his passion for snowboarding, new advances in e-bike technology, and the growing capabilities of motion sensors, Doerksen set out to create something that could bring the feeling of snowboarding to streets, parks, and trails.

“I spent about a year in my garage tinkering [with ideas] nights and weekends, trying to make a first proof of concept model,” recalls Doerksen.

That tinkering evolved into Onewheel, a self-balancing electric skateboard controlled by leaning: forward to accelerate, back to slow down. When Doerksen first stepped on the original prototype he had low expectations given the rough setup: a chain drive powered by an Arduino and lead-acid batteries taken from a security light. 

But from the very first ride he realized he’d hit on something special—almost magical—and a few years later in 2014 Future Motion launched Onewheel commercially. The product was simple, intuitive to use, and super fun to ride.

“Every single product we've designed has been fully designed in SOLIDWORKS, from initial ideation and 3D CAD to the fully detailed parts that we release for design,” explains Doerksen. Future Motion also relies on Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS Simulation for structural and thermal analysis, allowing them to predict how well a product will perform before it ever ships.

Since its beginnings, the Future Motion team set out to keep the product as simple as possible, deliberately minimizing mechanical complexity at every stage of development. “It really has one moving part,” explains Doerksen, emphasizing an ongoing battle against unnecessary complication.

The goal at Future Motion was clear from the start: Build something simple, reliable, and fun.

Despite having simplicity as their focus, the Future Motion team incorporated unique design elements by leveraging some of the lesser-known features in SOLIDWORKS, including advanced flattening capabilities to generate precise die lines to create compound curvature on the foot pads.

For Doerksen, the best part isn't the design itself, it’s watching what people do with it: “What's most exciting for me about Onewheel is just seeing the different ways people use it.”

With hundreds of thousands of riders, Onewheel has proven its popularity in the current market. Doerksen sums up the journey to build the Onewheel product with: “It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of work. And if you feel like you must [build a product], then do it.”